Friday, September 1, 2006

Now Anyone Can Be a Sex Offender!

Posted By on Fri, Sep 1, 2006 at 4:35 PM

In Ohio they've finally managed to solve the pesky problem of living in a "democracy" where you're "innocent" until "proven" guilty. Now, even if you've never been convicted of a crime, you can be labeled a sex offender:

A recently enacted law allows county prosecutors, the state attorney general, or, as a last resort, alleged victims to ask judges to civilly declare someone to be a sex offender even when there has been no criminal verdict or successful lawsuit.

This is a great system, because not only can pretty much anyone who feels like it try to get you labelled as an offender, you have perfect recourse to have the label removed ... after six years.

A civilly declared offender, however, could petition the court to have the person's name removed from the new list after six years if there have been no new problems and the judge believes the person is unlikely to abuse again.

Shouldn't that read "unlikely to abuse again, or maybe to have ever abused at all"?