Category: Tales from the Registry

By William J . . . I was born in 1980 in Metro Detroit , Michigan . I have two brothers 5 and 7 years older than me. My father worked in the auto industry and my mother stayed home mostly , albeit the odd job here and there, due to mental illness. The house was and still is neglected and deplorable with waist deep rotten garbage and rodent infestation. I suffered extreme physical and psychological abuse from my mother as well as sexual abuse from my brothers and other people in the neighborhood with my first memories of sexual abuse starting as young as 5 years old. I would go to school covered in filth and malnourished. I developed a stuttering problem and wet the bed until I was I was 13. The nightmare didn’t just end at home with my mother. At school I was bullied and teased mercilessly , as were my brothers. I was bullied even…

By Eric . . . My story begins about 2018 when I saw a news special about a girl whose father had been raping her. Her father was a police officer. Before this, I had never thought twice about sex crimes. Never looked at child porn. Never had a longing for it, which remains to this day. After viewing this interview which had the victim, who was now an adult telling her story I started to do internet research on the crime. Well, needless to say, up pops all these sites that have the actual footage on them. So, dumbass that I am, I start clicking, and clicking, and clicking. It became an obsession as I was shocked by everything I had found and that it was so easily available. I just clicked away. Yes I had child porn on my computer (crime). I never shared it, it was always locked away behind passwords. In June of 2019 I was…

By Jeffrey DeVore . . . This is the most difficult thing I’ve ever written. While I’ve told parts of this story in verbal or written form to some family members and to friends, I’ve never felt the freedom to be brutally and daringly honest—because there’s never been anyone who gets what it’s like having served time and then being on the registry. Family, friends, do their best to understand, but they can’t get it—through no fault of their own. My conditions forbid me to associate with any felons, no matter the charge, which leaves me feeling isolated, lonely, and not-gotten. While I’m not allowed to associate with any of your readers on the registry, I don’t know you, we have no means of contact, I don’t know who’s reading this, so I’m not associating. I am so grateful to NARSOL for providing this format, and just as I have resonated with and wept over your “Tales”, so my hope…

By JS . . . Long story short: My arrest date was 1986, assault with the intent to commit forceable rape. Ultimately, convicted during the second trial and sent to prison on circumstantial evidence. Upon my release date from prison in 1992. I went on to succeed and thrive in business. I was in middle management with a fortune 10 company and was repeatedly awarded and recognized for outstanding achievements and leadership. I accomplished immediate and immense success in business, got married to a top real estate agent and we enjoyed an amazing lifestyle residing in a beautiful master planned, gated, golf community. We were building a real estate portfolio and businesses, and life was good. Then the 2008 housing crash materialized the perfect storm. Real estate and my business was abysmal, as it all started to unravel. My attempts to apply for employment from my previous employers were rejected. The very same employers where i once thrived and was…

By John . . . At the end of 14 years and part of 15, I had done some of what was done to me, having grown up in a domestically abusive house. My older siblings subjected me to it. It was all I knew or even thought normal, like it meant you were developing and growing up. I turned my own self in. I trusted the “system” and government. Even my parents now regret that ever happening, narcissists who shrug it off like “How could we know (that was going to happen)?”.The state ran tests through a local hospital, and what we would find out over a decade later, they withheld from me a congenital neurological defect that is extremely rare. The nurse came in and said “Oh, you just have a small harmless optic nerve cyst”. The neurological defect from birth, impossible to miss, is on the 4th ventricle of my brain stem. I knew as a teenager…

By Uncle Jack . . . My story is not typical, since I was retired with a pension when I was charged. So, money or a place to live was not an issue. Traveling, especially outside the US has been a crazy experience other people would not believe. However, my issue here is “volunteer work.” Before being on the SOR, I used to volunteer for Meals on Wheels, Habitat for Humanity and a few others. My state’s restrictions against SOR’s says you must notify organizations, where you volunteer, of your SOR status. Not wanting to tell people all about my situation, I simply quit volunteering. Simple. To do volunteer work without telling the organization could be a felony. So, what experiences have other SOR’s had in this regard?

By Leeallen . . . Hello, my name is Leeallen and I register as a sex offenders in Michigan. I’m  texting you today in regards to employment discrimination. I’ve  put in 59 applications  on indeed and  20+ in person not to mention Craigslist. When I first got out in 2018 I was able to find a job at a taco bell  where I worked for two years. I left to work  for Applebee’s  who hired me for a single day before aggressively  firing me because they claim  I lied on my application. I did not they’re  application asked if you’ve  ever been convicted of theft or dishonesty and I of course said no. Be that  as it may I did end up working  at a very undesirable factory though  I’d  happily take a similar  situation again. And admittedly  I left there simply because I got fed yp with work conditions there. After that I did find an opportunity  to work…

By Voices . . . The PA SOAB is a governing body established by the PA legislature among other things to establish standards by which certified treatment providers for sexual offenders are created and then enforced. The “board” sits a collection of men and women of various professional backgrounds who have established this list of criteria. The board primarily focuses on SVP evaluation for courts and the subsequent certification of treatment providers for SVPs. If you dont know, SVP is a 10 cent word for Sexually Violent Predator. In PA a seperate hearing is established after a conviction to determine if a sexual offender is a SVP level offender. It is not so much a legal term (though it is in the law) as it is a determination made by an SOAB member who will evaluate the person in question and then inform the court. The court, not shockingly will side then most likely with said recommendation. If a person…

By J . . . It was a bright and sunny morning the day I heard the neighbor yelling on the porch. I squinted my eye open. She was a loud woman and usually talked at a high volume but this was fear tinged. My blood ran cold. What was this? She grew quiet. Did she leave? Bang! My bedroom door slams open. My dad is there, a large man. You get your a** in the kitchen now some people want to ask you some questions. I shuffle in. There is two women and standing with them are there kids, 1 each. I knew immediately that this was what I feared it was. The days that tumbled by felt like a horrible nightmare. The police interrogations, the time away from school, the confinement to school and moms house exclusively. It was all so much. My life was unraveling around me because I had done something very bad. We can skip…

By J . . . As a kid in the system I grew up in one of PA’s toughest prisons and I learned early on that the mountain ahead of me for my actions was not going to be easy to climb.Moving forward in life I knew that once my time was done I would need to learn everything I could to try to educate people on what the registry truly is, how it became, and most importantly how we as a society might fix it. Today, I want to explore. What the future registry of tomorrow might look like. It is split into 3 sections: If things remain the same, if they were fixed, and if the registry were abolished. As always with anything like this there are a million moving parts and obviously flaws to any logic. Scenario 1, Total Crackdown Registry When you look at what a registry of tomorrow might look like you have to understand…