Human Rights report pans offender laws

Lawmakers are struggling to make the state's sexual predators law mirror the federal Adam Walsh Act, named for the 6-year-old snatched from a Florida store in 1981. Authorities never found his body, just his head in a canal 120 miles away. Suspects in the unsolved crime have included the infamous Jeffrey Dahmer and a Florida mass murderer, Otis O'Toole, who died in prison in 1996 for another crime. O'Toole twice confessed to killing Walsh, but later recanted and authorities never charged him.

The federal law posts an Internet profile of most sex offenders, including their photo, age, home address, license plate number, identifying features, and employer's name and address, if they have a job. Those felons also give the police a DNA sample.

Each person is assigned to a reporting tier based on the severity of his crime. Tier III is for the worst threats, people who register four times a year for life.

Assistant Attorney General Ann Rice warned that New Hampshire could lose up to $200,000 in crime-prevention grants unless its law substantially conforms to Adam Walsh.
Study debunks sex predator laws

Recently, Human Rights Watch, a national research and advocacy group, issued a damning report on the spate of sex offender laws that swept the country after the 2005 murder of Jessica Lunsford in Florida.

The 146-page document said the popular Internet offender registries endanger children by driving the few intractable pedophiles underground. The study tried to debunk several alleged myths: that all sex offenders are like Dahmer and O'Toole and prey on strangers; that they have many victims; that they commit new sex crimes after release from prison; and that treatment programs are useless.

The report, "No Easy Answers: Sex Offender Laws in the United States," found the vast majority of offenders against children have a single victim well known to them. It also said sex offenders are the least likely of all parolees to re-offend, and therapy cuts that risk even more.

The report criticized municipal ordinances like the ones in Dover, Franklin, Tilton and Northfield that keep offenders from living near schools, parks and day-care centers. The study said these bans can cost sex offenders their friends, jobs, spouses, families and mental health. It also makes them more dangerous, being homeless and with no address to report.
Reams stands by law

Rockingham County Attorney Jim Reams serves on a national executive task force of prosecutors, helped draft New Hampshire's child predator law, lobbied for it, and found the Rights Watch study biased. He said the country has more than 600,000 registered sex offenders, and only a handful have been murdered. The county attorney opposes residency restrictions on sex offenders, but said they have passed constitutional muster so far.

Reams said a recent study of pedophiles at the federal Butner Corrections Center in North Carolina found that most had multiple victims. The report said 132 men had confessed to sexually abusing 1,777 young children. A Canadian study of sex offenders showed much the same thing, Reams said, and the lifelong recidivism rate was more than 90 percent.

It should be noted the Butner facility is the only one in the federal system devoted to treating serial pedophiles. The Canadian study tracked 300 inmates arrested in the 1950s and 1960s when only fixated pedophiles went to prison. Even talk of incest was taboo, and modern therapies did not exist.

Carolyn Lucet of Conway has counseled hundreds of sex offenders in therapy over the last 30 years. She said only one has ever returned to prison on a new sex charge. She called the Human Rights Watch study reliable and urged lawmakers to classify sex offenders by rigorous clinical standards used in several states.

"The offenders I deal with are very frightened," Lucet said. "The man who murdered two offenders in Maine had New Hampshire names on his list. That man in Tennessee hasn't even been tried yet. And he's homeless."

Janis Wolak, a UNH researcher on crimes against kids, said the Rights Watch study is consistent with the scientific literature. Many sex offenders are treatable, and the incidence of sex crimes has declined for more than a decade, she said. The typical abusers are family members, close friends, babysitters, coaches, priests, teachers. Among teenagers, it's their peers. She said there are no studies to show if the new laws protect children.

"We desperately need research on it. The media is fixated on the stranger-danger idea," Wolak said. "Most are nonviolent. They use their authority as a father, stepfather or uncle."

Defense lawyers widely predicted their clients would reject plea deals under the new law. That's because the state can hold an offender five more years in prison if they remain dangerous to society. But Reams has seen no major shift in the pre-trial process. Most cases went to trial in the past.

"They still do," he said.

Assistant Attorney General Rice told lawmakers the state should conform with federal law by classifying people by their crimes, not by their actuarial risk. In an interview, Rice said she was aware of clinical indexes that claim to predict whether certain types of sex felons are likely to re-offend.

Attorney Mike Iacopino heads the Defense Lawyers Association and told Rice, "Just do without the federal money."
Swett bows out

Nobody had to guess why U.S. Senate candidate Katrina Swett called her press conference recently. Sure enough, she bowed out to let former three-term Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen of Madbury save her money for the general election against incumbent Republican John Sununu. Portsmouth Mayor Steve Marchand quit his campaign right after Shaheen entered the race, and he endorsed her as well.

Nobody pressured Swett to step down, she said, not Democratic Chairman Ray Buckley and not Shaheen, who led Sununu 54-38 in a UNH poll in July. A Fox News/Rasmussan poll Sept. 16 showed him trailing her 48-43.

Swett has an unspent war chest of more than a million dollars after what she called some record fundraising, and she plans to use part of it to help other Democrats. Might she keep a little for a future campaign of her own? The question drew a round of applause from 30 well-wishers.

"That sounds like a very interesting strategy," Swett said.

The former candidate pledged to support Shaheen any way she is asked, but wants to avoid muscling in. She saved her tears for the personal goodbyes with staunch supporters, hugging Frank and Irja Cilluffo of Portsmouth. They've known her for two decades and backed her husband, former Congressman Dick Swett.

"You guys are true friends. I love you both," Swett said.

Frank Cilluffo strongly opposed the Iraq war beforehand, one of his reasons for liking Swett, and now Shaheen. Irja was an Estonian refugee in World War II. Her father was executed in 1942.

"There is never any moral profit in war," she said. "We inherited a cancerous mess in Iraq with no easy way out. My heart goes out when I hear of our young people being killed. For what?"
Bramante takes hit

State school board member Fred Bramante of Durham was honored to speak last month at the opening of a new middle school in Weare, but not by a letter to the Union Leader and Concord Monitor blasting him for what he said there, or rather, didn't say.

"I cannot imagine a more inappropriate speaker for the opening of a public school than local music store tycoon Fred Bramante," said the attack by Dan Williams, a Weare teacher. "After telling the crowd how he failed as a student and teacher, he went on to shamelessly plug his business while indulging us in his vision for public education: one in which students would be able to opt out of virtually any course by providing evidence of real-world learning."

Matthew Thomas, chairman of the Weare School Board, strongly defended Bramante in a reply to the editors. "People like Fred Bramante who challenge the traditional systems need to be heard more often," Thomas said.

Bramante was amused by the flap and shared it with his state board colleagues. He said he used the forum to sell educators on the kind of student-centered teaching allowed under the state's school approval rules.
Sorry about that

A recent Golden Dome column on the proposed sale of the Verizon landlines to FairPoint Communications overstated the size of both companies. FairPoint owns 300,000 access lines, not miles of lines. Verizon has 1.5 million access lines, not miles of line.

Chris Dornin, of Golden Dome News, covers the Statehouse in Concord.

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