The immediate access of the sex offender registries by anyone with internet access has kept those required to register out of work. Potential employers are simply unwilling to take a chance.
Meet William from Michigan, convicted of a misdemeanor offense. He paid his debt to society, returned to school and earned a bachelor degree in computer science.
He can't get hired.
(...)
"...the married, 39-year-old Army veteran cannot have his name stricken from the police and public sex offender registries. He must remain listed until 2027.
With many employers unwilling to hire a person on the registry, the lengthy term could relegate him to a life with no job or being underemployed.
Being on the registry also limits where he can live and shuts him out of his son's school activities. Although his crime had nothing to do with children, he's subjected to the same restrictions as a convicted pedophile.
"It's miserable," William said. "I've had people leave church because I'm there."
He was on the management track and had been named employee of the month at his last job. A co-worker discovered that he was a listed sex offender, threatened to blow the whistle, and they were both fired, he said.
That was five years ago.
At a recent job interview with a large company, William was confident he'd landed the position. Told that a routine background check was required, he admitted to being listed on the registry.
William is waiting to hear from the company but doesn't hold out hope.
"I can't get hired," he said. "If somebody would give me a chance."
(...)
Tracy Velazquez, The Policy Institute:
State registries were originally set up to help law enforcement keep track of potentially dangerous and violent sex offenders. They were later expanded to provide information to the public, now by Web sites.
"It's the widespread use over the Internet that has negative effects, Velazquez said. "For law enforcement keeping tabs, it makes sense. But for people trying to live successfully in society, it makes sense for them to have jobs and decent living conditions."
Read the commentary over at the Herald Palladium (An Unfair Stigma, 1/2/2010) here.
16 comments:
I was convicted because my 2 yr old grandson touched me and I did not report it to social services in Feb 99. I could not find a job. I also have a BA in Accounting. I moved in 2006 and was charged with faliure to register in the state I moved to even though i continued to report to the state that I was convicted in. Now 2010 and Im still unemployed. So whats new?
Full compliance with the AWA will free up even more jobs for the 'good' people.
Job discrimination, anyone? On top of housing discrimination?
And for how many persons designated as sex offenders? How many of their families continue to be impacted?
Although I am continually not surprised, then again, I am...in this country, how has this been permitted legally to continue?
I did want to say $100 million has been released by the feds in green job grants, perhaps self-employment opportunities. Check with your area WorkForce center for more information.
why would anyone report that to social services?
RED ALERT:
Yall better jump on this one.
Hank Asher, John Walsh, Scumford, I mean Lunsford, ED SMART (imagine your surprise) And Asher in an old IBM bldg. Imagine that. IBM produced the data for the NAZIS to track jews ... Go read. Make noise. The United Nations is in on this one. A virtual sea of child pornographers they say. Right. Cause that's all anyone does with the internet.
Boca database entrepreneur turns his attention from terrorists to pedophiles
By JEFF OSTROWSKI
Saturday, March 14, 2009
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/search/content/local_news/epaper/2009/03/14/0314asher.html
BOCA RATON — The details are too hideous to believe: An Alabama woman arranges to have her 7-year-old relative and another child raped by a pedophile.
Hank Asher launched TLFO in Boca Raton. He claims to be building the world?s most powerful computer. One of its roles: Tracking criminals who rape and murder children.
What are these?
She even drugs the children so they won't resist.
The woman, a former teacher, is caught only because a high-powered team of pedophile hunters based in Boca Raton discovers that she's distributing child porn online. Cops set up a sting that results in the arrest of the woman and the man she summoned to her home.
That January bust is just one of dozens throughout the country credited to data guru Hank Asher's latest venture, the cryptically named TLFO. Asher made hundreds of millions of dollars by founding two Boca Raton companies, Database Technologies and Seisint and later selling his stakes in them.
Now, Asher says he's investing $500 million- including $200 million of his own cash - to build the world's most powerful computer, one that will string together 100,000 potent servers and will be housed in a 25,000-square-foot bunker at the birthplace of the personal computer in Boca Raton.
Asher is cagey about the business plan for all that horsepower, but he's eager to describe one of the computer's functions: Tracking down pedophiles who rape and sometimes murder infants, toddlers and children.
Because he doesn't want to alert his prey, Asher is also vague about exactly how he unearths child predators. He does say, though, that pedophiles have found a safe haven on the Web.
"At one point, we were gaining ground on these guys," Asher said. "In the last five years, this has gone epidemic, and it's because of the Internet. Now I'm going to make their best friend into their worst nightmare."
'The worst of the worst'
Asher is a 57-year-old motor mouth who favors pink polo shirts, enjoys smoking the tires of his souped-up black Mercedes and imagines that God is a black woman.
He already has proven he knows how to find criminals. After the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Seisint developed software that identified terrorists. And his work led to the arrest of the Beltway snipers who killed 10 people in the Washington, D.C., area in 2002.
"The systems we made were for terrorists, but they work for pedophiles," he said.
Asher's story is an unlikely one. A self-described Indiana farm boy who dropped out of high school ("I wasn't exactly a dropout - I ran out," he said), Asher moved to Fort Lauderdale in the early 1970s and ran a successful firm that painted high-rise buildings.
But his late-blooming skill with data made Asher truly wealthy. He owned 40 percent of Seisint in 2004, when it was sold to British publishing giant Reed Elsevier for $775 million and became part of LexisNexis.
"I really thought I'd wind up on a 200-foot yacht down in the South Pacific," Asher said. "But I decided to go back to work."
In 1993, Asher donated his database software to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The first time his creation helped rescue a child from a predator, Asher said, he felt like he was cashing "a paycheck for the soul."
Since then, Asher has immersed himself in the underworld of child predators. It's a subculture where pedophiles trade not only ghastly images of children being raped but also instructional videos such as cartoons designed to teach young children that sex with adults is normal.
Asher said he wants to catch "the worst of the worst," men who rape infants, toddlers and young children.
He has assembled an impressive team of pedophile hunters, including former Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth, former Mississippi Attorney General Michael Moore, the recently retired sheriff of Collier County and a former Wyoming police officer who's an expert on pedophilia.
Running TLFO is Ken Hunter, a steely-eyed former chief postal inspector who has been tracking pedophiles for 40 years. A decade ago, the Postal Service had tightened the clamps on child porn.
"Along came the Internet, and everything went to hell," Hunter said. "It used to be a pedophile knew they were weird. Today, there's so much of it out there that it seems normal."
Erin Runnion, whose 5-year-old daughter was raped and murdered in Southern California in 2002, was a recent guest of Asher's at the Boca bunker. She said Asher's work already is protecting children.
"It really is revolutionary," Runnion said. "There's no way you can tell by looking at somebody that they're a pedophile. But you can look on their hard drive and see that there's child porn."
'The Last One'
Asher is spending big money on real estate. In anticipation of hiring hundreds of employees, he late last year leased 143,000 square feet at the former IBM headquarters, now known as Boca Corporate Center. He took an option to lease an additional 500,000 square feet there.
If Asher exercises the option, he'll have the equivalent of a small shopping mall filled with computers and workers. Asher said he aims to hire 5,000 people at his new company, TLFO.
The name is an acronym for "The Last One." (Asher, who drops F-bombs with aplomb, doesn't mention what the F stands for.) After founding Database Technologies and Seisint, Asher said, he doesn't want to start another company after this one.
Asher has vowed not to charge cops for helping catch child molesters, so hunting these predators won't cover the costs of real estate, servers and employees. But he won't discuss his business plan, except to say that he might sell background checks to employers who hire workers who come in contact with children.
Asher's reticence owes to the non-compete agreement he signed with Reed Elsevier when he sold Seisint. His Web site, www.tlfo.com, counts down the hundredths of seconds until that non-compete agreement ends this year.
"I'm sure there will be commercial applications," Asher said.
With characteristic bombast, Asher hints at ambitious plans for TLFO.
"I'm going for the gusto," he said. "I don't want to check out of this planet without building the world's most valuable company."
'The rules are you don't mess with kids'
In the meantime, Asher has courted the support of parents of murdered and abused children.
Last month, he flew the parents of two dozen murdered, kidnapped or otherwise-abused children to South Florida and put them up at the Boca Raton Resort & Club for a weekend. Then he flew them to Washington, D.C., to talk to lawmakers and federal officials.
The guest list was a who's-who of heartbroken parents. John Walsh, father of Adam Walsh and host of TV show America's Most Wanted, was there. So were the parents of Jessica Lunsford and Elizabeth Smart, the Utah girl who was abducted as a teen and forced to play the wife of a deranged bigamist.
An animated Asher led parents on a tour of his cavernous facility in Boca Raton. Workers had installed new carpet and renovated the bathrooms, but the furniture hadn't arrived, and construction of the server room was just beginning. He described how the floor of the bunker would be raised to guard against flooding and said he'll have a back-up data center in Alpharetta, Ga.
Asher conducted the tour with the timing of a stand-up comic. He mimicked Moore's Mississippi accent and chided Butterworth for sweet-talking Boca building officials after Asher had irritated them. But when the topic turned to predators, Asher grew serious.
"The rules are you don't mess with kids," Asher told his audience.
Ed Smart, Elizabeth's father, lauded Asher for investing in what he considers a forgotten cause.
"We so desperately wanted to see the Internet crimes being taken seriously," Smart said. "Crime against children does not get the attention it deserves."
Butterworth, who stepped down last year as head of the Florida Department of Children and Families, said he joined Asher's team in part because sexual abuse is rampant in foster care.
"The public does not realize how severe this problem is," Butterworth said.
Butterworth hopes TLFO can build a database that will let teachers, police and case workers see more information about children who are victims of sexual abuse. Now, a cop or teacher who suspects abuse has no way of knowing what others have learned about the child's problems.
Yknow what's interesting??? Even before I summoned the smashed frog forces: the comments were leaning towards this guy is an asshole. Sunny... get on this bob butterworth connection going to DCF first and then quietly going away after less than two years??? Maybe less than a year ... and IT WAS WEIRD that he even was summonsed to that position IN THE FIRST PLACE. So .. he is quietly using info gleaned as a state emp. to further the ambition of a trafficker. Get on this ...
Also ... you guys see what I mean about SPT???
I'm forming a PAC. This is as in political ACTION COMMITTEE. In this fashion we will topple these bastards before they topple ALL OF US. I see asher going after anyone ... where has ron book slithered away to? Why no mention of HRH and girl wonder here?? Isn't he ALL STAR enough??? Sunny ... susan taylor martin: Smart cookie.
Isn't it awesome how I have decided that you are powerful enough to summon for an article powerful enough to estoppel the filth?? Yeppers. PACs can FOIA the snipe out of stuff. Do some reading about civil commitment and the fraud therein. I bet you already have. Do another series. Yep. You're welcome for the invitation to work you harder. Sorry, I'm pretty busy as noted by my lack of blogging, constant stalking of myself and family and powerful connections taking notice on the light side. ROFLCOPTER. Also ... a viewing of the end of schindler's list. PUSH PUSH PUSH BACK.
Also, that ekonomou name... remember the freak who was stealing body parts from accidents ergo her ousting from the FIRE DEPT??? REAL ESTATE. Shows up all ova da place.
asset seizure via the RSO SRO list. Standing room only on the RSO. Soon Asher-co will be the only names NOT ON the list. Look at that photo of him. Still trafficking. Protected.
BUT all that is about to topple. Don't ask me how I know.
One of my T H A N G S.
his reticence is due to:::: MY ASS.
OH MY GOD. I never left the link and there is STILL a viable discussion going on w/the majority falling on the side of the RSO and w/ the remainder attacking the journalist.
Get there, guys::
Sorry about the link.
My very very bad.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/article1064010.ece
For myself you can almost always assume it's the SPT (tampabay.com)
In this case, Ms. Taylor Martin is ON IT. YAY, Ms Taylor Martin.
Everyone should link to her with thanks and congrats cause they are beating up on her as she wages this against known criminals who are exploiting thought crime. Pop a disk in to find child porn MY ASS. Gimme one of those disks at random> I bet you FIVE MILLION DOLLARS that they PLANT child porn. It's THAT QUICK. Seen it done on a computer system at my old college employment ... Once in the root directory it's going to pop up EVERYWHERE. betcha ten million bucks that what asher is doing. Someone please suggest this to ms. taylor martin.
You know, I have tried to join up with that news group with 3 different email addresses and I got no response from them, so I could not join in the conversation,
But I have got to say... Anonymous, you are wasting your time trying to talk to those idiots. They have already made up their mind and you seem to be more intelligent than they are. Probably because the commenter's are mostly law enforcement.
Do yourself and your community a favor. Start a blog and let people know of your findings. You will be read by the public. Leave room for comments, but stop feeding the pigs. They are not worth your time.
But book the point is that if no one has a say ... it sways public opinion ... you have to have to have to ... keep putting your thoughts forward. I'm surprised you did not hear from them. Keep trying. It's worth your time. F those idiots. Let the world see the intelligent people.
That's a good point about "mostly law enforcement", Book.
For those who have never attended a child safety conference or workshop, those in attendance are not everyday citizens...it's LE, victim advocates, effected family members. Oh, and usually one reporter, a step up from the obituary beat.
Politicians more often meet behind closed doors with these folks.
Unfortunately, the same few urge legislation through.
This database is considered illegal in certain states that forbid public listings of all offender names. I suggest those involved in the latest profit based listing hire plenty of legal.
That's my point. Instead of letting the LEO and their families ride the boards and sway and attempt to color public opinion we MUST present the alternate viewpoint. They sign up with two or three usernames and comment as each one ... I'm not saying we need to do that. I am saying that we must represent the alternate viewpoint. Sunny and the rest of us only have ONE blog... no one has to read her words. BUT, people READ that paper. Politicians live and die by that paper. I hope I've been more clear on the necessity to have our say. It's not a whim or a 'talking to those people' (LOL) or I'd have not wasted ANY time .... but a need to get the alternate viewpoint before a captive audience.
Post a Comment