What does the Registered Sex Offender list do for my family and I? Nothing. How does it help us? It doesn’t. Has it protected us? No. Has it saved us from something horrible happening to one of our children? Not in the least. Has it helped us to find a safe place to live? Not once. What has the RSO list done for us? It has kept my family homeless, hopping from place to place trying to live a normal life like everyone else. It has cost my husband jobs that would have otherwise allowed us to pay taxes, purchase a dependable car, health insurance for our children, keep off of welfare, put food on the table, and provide a better future for our babies. It has made me distrustful of every single person I’ve ever come in contact with simply because I cannot tell if they are looking to get close to hurt my family and I, or to genuinely be a friend to us. It has made me intensely protective of my children because of the crazy vigilante’s out there who actually have the audacity to make DEATH THREATS against my babies, just for having a father as a sex offender. It has caused us to go into hiding, as legally as we can, by buying an RV, and living in it full time, just so that if we’re asked to leave (again) we can just drive away this time instead of having to pay a bunch of money for a down payment on a place, and hook up the utilities once more. I cannot send my children to public school. The teachers, although the school claims to give all children from challenging situations and backgrounds an equal chance at education, are treated like they are stupid, and scum. I couldn’t be the PTA member, or room Mom, or even the chaperone for my child’s class field trip because I’m the wife of a sex offender, so I must encourage pedophilia and maybe I am one too. The other children cannot come over to our house to play. Not because we’re afraid my husband will do something. No. It’s because the other parents are scared of us. We’re a disease. We’re taboo. We’re the scarlet letter of modern day society. We’re a threat to the community, and a huge disappointment to our families. So, I home school my children, and shield them from the hate and venom of a close-minded, one-way-thinking society. It’s my job, as their mother, to protect them from all evil. Most would assume this means I shield them from their father. But I don’t. I shield them from the “good Christian woman” down the road who chased my husband six houses down the street, screaming after my husband’s car, “Sex Offender! LEAVE OUR NEIGHBORHOOD,” when he was leaving our home to go and buy a gallon of milk for our children to eat breakfast the next morning. Even though we’d been living there for four years prior to “the good Christian woman“, and kept to ourselves, never bothering anyone. Somehow, we deserve this evilness. No one ever takes the time to even find out the truth, let alone the details. Besides, the common person knows only this much (incorrect) information about the almighty sex offender list: 1) It’s always right. 2) The date of conviction is 100% correct.. 3) The offender is a pedophile, no matter what the offense was, or when it was. 4) Even if the offense happened 30 years ago, and they’ve never re-offended, they are still a risk, and very dangerous – no matter the “low” risk level. Yes, the RSO list has been hell on earth for us. Let’s forget the fact that retroactive laws are made every year to punish, and re-punish and then punish again, all that have finished their sentence and paid for their crime, even decades ago. You can commit murder, killing 5 little children and finish your sentence of 30 years in prison, then walk away even more free than the man who kissed his 15 year old girlfriend when he was 18. Something is wrong with that picture. Life in this country is not good for the sex offender of ANY crime deemed a sexual offense. You can drive drunk and strike a family on their way to Sunday morning church, killing them all and eventually walk away more free than the man who had to urinate badly enough to pull over on the side of a country road, and get caught peeing into a bush by a police officer having a bad day. You’re better off robbing a bank, armed, than you are having consensual sex with a 16 year old girl. Eventually, the stigma of your robbery days will wear off, and who knows, perhaps you can even become a mentor for ex-convicts or a mentor speaker for under privileged teens at risk; but not if you’re an RSO. If you’re even the wife of an RSO, you cannot become a police officer. Why? Because they usually do a check and eventually find out you are married to a sex offender, and that makes her a risk too. How do I know? I tried to get work as a jailer to help out my family and try to obtain good health care insurance for my children. I’ve got no background. I’ve committed no crimes. However, I am trash because I love, I forgive, and I do not judge; just as God intended. So, now you are curious, as you read this. My husband, he MUST be a bad man, right? He must be a horribly, sick, deranged, child abducting, stalking, predatory child molester. He just has to be. Because if he isn’t, then the rest of the society can’t look at my situation and feel hate, and believe honestly that my babies and I deserve this kind of injustice and labeling. It would cause someone to re-evaluate their belief in the media’s hysteria over every sex offender case that popped up, and every listed RSO that moves within a mile of them. It would cause them to stop, and actually look a second time at the true person, instead of the label placed on their name. No one likes to have his or her belief shaken. So I stay quiet. I stay quiet to keep from their anger piercing my family and I. I stay quiet to protect my innocent children from the monsters who call themselves normal, law-abiding citizens. I hide my babies away from the world that would shoot them, strangle them, and take away their beautiful little lives, if only to hurt the man who gave them life. Besides, as some of those sick “law abiders” reason: “They will grow up to be sex offenders too. The cycle only continues, and genetically, they are tainted.” It’s the prevention of what could be one more sex offender, in their minds. I, however, am their mother; the bearer of their lives, and their beating hearts. I have, for them, hopes, dreams, and love so large than no mind can possibly comprehend. This life doesn’t just encompass my children, but their father as well. I’ve given him my life, my heart, my promise to be his faithful wife, and to support him through the good and the bad. No man will put us under. I stand in front of my family, strong, proud, and fiercely protective of all who would dare to harm us, not because I am ill in my mind, and not because I support the abuse of another being in any way; physical, emotional, or sexual. I stand because he is good, and because the crime he was charged with was petty, unnecessary, and full of law making an example out of him. I will tell you his horrible crime. He was 19. She was 14. She flirted. He flirted back. She touched him on the groin with her head. He responded by touching the outside of her clothes on her left breast. She pushed to take it further. He came to his senses and asked her age. She told the truth. He sent her home. She felt rejected, and angry. He was arrested for indecency with a minor by contact. This was 18 years ago. He’s never re-offended. He’s never committed another crime of any kind, not even so much as a speeding ticket. He finished his education. He got a job paying very well – eventually, but he lost many more before that time. He was mentally tortured by a psychotic probation officer who never admitted that she was best friends with the “victim” who grew up to become a police officer in the same county my husband was supervised out of. She didn’t admit it until the end, when she took delight in rubbing our faces in the fact that her needless home invasions at all hours of the day and night to search for anything that she could revoke him on. He completed lie detector test after test, counseling session after session, plethysmographs, CPS home studies and parenting classes, and so forth, all successfully – without any issues and gained recommendation from all those he cooperated with – yet she refused to allow him an inch to breath. He couldn’t see his own children. He couldn’t kiss his own wife. He couldn’t live in his own house; and all for what? After almost 11 years of her abuse of authority and forcing us to live apart ,even though we were married and had children, ( I was a 21 yr old woman, and he was 26), we’d finally had enough. We pled with the judge to please just send him to prison, and let him serve the rest of his probation time there. With much confusion, and questioning at our pleadings, the judge allowed this to happen. He went away to a low risk prison for 9 months and was paroled back out with another 9 months to complete. The parole officer was incredibly kind and fair. We followed all of the rules, the few that there were, and we were also allowed to live together as family. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles explained to us that keeping an offender separated from a support system actually increased their chances of being returned to the system. That the probation officer we were dealing with before was using the blanket conditions she’d make up and apply to purposefully keep him away from anyone who could support him and help him through, hoping he’d fail and go back to jail. During the probationary period I had to get a job, and I was pregnant with my third child. Because my husband couldn’t live with us, he was struggling to pay for two homes, two sets of utilities, plus supplies we needed for the children and I. He often went without eating so we could eat. He gave me the one car we had, and he rode a bicycle 22 miles each way to his job. Through it all, he still fought like hell to take care of us. Because my family wanted nothing to do with me once I had married a “sex offender” (they didn’t want to take the time to find out his offense, or even get to know him), I was without much help. So I sought for help to care for my son while I worked. The help I received turned out to be a nightmare in disguise. My son was kidnapped by this woman. I called the police and filed a kidnapping report. Hours turned to days. Days turned to weeks. Weeks turned to months. By this time I was more than 8 months pregnant with my third child, and it was almost all that was left keeping me alive. I’d almost given up my whole will to go on. Loosing a child like that, it does horrible things to your mental disposition. It makes you unwell, and hopeless. It brings you into the deepest pits of hell and unimaginable despair. Then, one day, as I was outside trying to reclaim a normal part of my life by pulling weeds in my tiny flower garden, the mailman walked up to me with the letter than would ultimately rip my life to pieces. It was a certified letter from an attorney based in Plano, Texas. My child was in the hands of an adoption agency that was attempting to take custody of him and adopt him out. He had been taken from me in June of 2000, and it was, at that time, October, 2000. I opened the letter and nearly collapsed. I called the local police and told the detective working on my case what I had found out, and he sighed, telling me he’d call them, and try to reason with them to return my son, but that this was all he could do for me. That this was no longer a criminal case now, but a civil case that had to be fought in court. It was “legalized kidnapping”. I’d never heard of this being possible until that moment. He called the owner of the agency, and was met with resistance and lies that would aid her in retaining my son until our first hearing in court. Upon learning this, I lost it mentally and suffered a nervous breakdown. I also, simultaneously, went into distressed labor with my daughter. One emergency c-section (which I was put under for) and five days of painful recovery in the hospital (plus neonatal care for my daughter who went into distress), we were sent home – to face it all alone. I couldn’t walk for the first week due to a blood clot sitting on a nerve bundle that was mimicking the pain of knives being stabbed into my lungs and causing me to shallow breathe and lose consciousness. After battling a fever of 103 and an infection from the surgery for a week, and throwing up frequently, I had my mother in law (who worked full time to support her ailing husband) take me to the emergency room. Eventually I was cured of my misery, and finally able to give my full care to my baby. I cared for my newborn child while I was sick, and did so by keeping her in my bed so that I could reach her to feed, change, and love. I had been afraid that if something happened, I might not be able to get to her. She was my first priority and my reason for living at that time. My husband couldn’t be there to help me, like most new daddies are. He wasn’t allowed in our home. My family wasn’t there to help. They didn’t want anything to do with me. All he had of his family was his mother, and she grocery shopped for me and stopped by after work when she could. Aside from that, I spent that time raising my new baby girl alone, and recovering from a very botched cesarean section, while stressing out from the news I’d learned about my son. It wasn’t until February 2001 that the first hearing came about. I drove over 200 miles to simply state I acknowledged the “suit” and would be contesting it. I drove back home, after a 10-minute hearing, crying my heart out and shattered into a million pieces all over again. My husband, all he could do was hold my hand and love me as I writhed in pain for what he felt he was responsible for. After all – the reason they kept my son after illegally obtaining him through deplorable methods, was because my husband was a listed sex offender and “may be a danger” to our children. When I attended the hearing, the owner had the guts to walk up to me and try to talk me into giving her my new baby girl. I wanted to slap her across the face for such a horrible suggestion, but I maintained my temper and just walked away crying instead. Not only was my son in danger, but so was my daughter. March came around, another hearing, for another needless meeting, to see if I would negotiate releasing custody of my son to the state for the good of him, because all of the sudden he’s now a “special needs” child. According to the child advocate lawyer, he cried uncontrollably, and was hostile towards other children. I couldn’t imagine why. Perhaps he missed his Mommy and Daddy? Perhaps he was frightened? One day he was in his home, in his crib, happy and oblivious to our struggles to get by. The next he was in the arms of a deranged woman who saw a nice, fat pay check sitting in her hands. Then, finally, June 2001 came to the rescue. My little girl, by then, was 8 months old. My son, who was kidnapped from his home, was then 19 months old. When he’d been taken, feared for dead, he was 6 months old. June 12th 2001: I listened to experts, doctors, and my own mother (who had been subpoenaed to testify that I was married to a dangerous man because at the time she was a sex offender registration officer, and a detective for missing and exploited children) all sitting on the stand, helping the evil woman in her greedy attempt to “sell” my child off. Fortunately, my mother didn’t disown me entirely, and wouldn’t say my husband was bad. (We later reconciled and I forgave her – we still work on our relationship but love each other deeply and she even accepts my husband as family as well now). She had a line that even she couldn’t cross. Bearing false witness to something that wasn’t true, was not her way. This backfired in the faces of my child’s kidnappers. On June 13th, I got my turn in the seat. I was ready to fight with all of my soul. I had an attorney, and my husband had an attorney. Two against one. When I looked the judge in the eyes and told her our story – showed her the truth in both papers and witnesses, it was no more than 5 minutes of my speaking that she was utterly disgusted with the scene she had witnessed in her court room, and ordered my son to be returned to me immediately. I’d never cried happier tears in my life, than that day. Three hundred and seventy three days passed by with my son being kept away, not because we hurt him, did drugs, molested him, abandoned him, starved him, or anything else. No. It was because someone found out my husband was a sex offender, and they thought they were doing our son some good by stealing him and then him being offered to another family for $13,600 (the adoption fee supposedly). My son was a screaming, kicking, and hostile little boy for the first 3 months he was home with his baby sister and I. It took me one full year of solid isolation. Just him, his baby sister, and myself together, trying to teach him compassion and love and constantly reassure him that he was safe again. This...this is what our precious Sex Offender Registry list does to innocent babies and families. It doesn’t protect our children. It makes them targets. It makes them victims. You don’t need to be beaten, or emotionally abused, or sexually abused to be a victim. You simply need to be related to a sex offender. That’s all. My very smart, affectionate, well-mannered 10 year old son knows who his father is, what his mistakes were, and why we live in seclusion and with a high guarded nature the way we do. He does not pitch a fit when I say that he cannot invite a friend over to play video games in our home because the parents could be looking for someone to hate and decide to make false allegations against my husband, just because he is an RSO. Our son is very kind, patient, and understanding about our situation, and knows that his daddy has walked through hell on earth for him and loves him immensely. He shouldn’t have to deal with these adult things at all, but society forces him to deal with it if he wants to be safe from the vigilantes of society who would like nothing more than to stir up trouble for our family. My beautiful, artfully talented, light-hearted, shy, loves-to-sing-at-the-top-of-her-lungs, 9 year old little girl doesn’t whine, or even cry when I tell her she cannot have a sleep over for her birthday because it’s not a good idea to invite little girls into the home of a sex offender who could be easily accused of something he didn’t do, just because someone is looking for a good way to get him out of the community. Instead, she adores her daddy with all of her heart, and looks up to him for all the times he’s taken time out to sit and help her patiently brush her very long, tender, head-full of hair, or read her the same bed time story over and over again. She is a daddy’s girl because he has finally stopped being afraid of giving her a hug when she comes in to tell us good night, or sits with her to teach her how to draw like a professional artist in 3D. Because he’s stopped being afraid of doing the simple things a father does for his child, like taking her to the park on a sunny day, and pushing her in the swings until she gets butterflies in her tummy. He puts his life at risk for the joy of his baby girl. Some monster that is. I do not see the monster others may see in him when they see the word “Sex Offender” above his photo online. I thought I did when I first met him, but then, I took off those fear mongering, media induced hysteria, pre-judgmental glasses and cast them aside. I looked at the facts, and I learned him, inside and out. I fell in love with him. I married him. I bore his children, proudly. And now we stand at the cusp of our tenth wedding anniversary, happier, and more in love than the day we met, stronger than many we know who’ve been married for 30 years or more, and without a day of regret. We’ve withstood more boulders hurled at our bonds, and more distances put between us physically than many couples can endure in their first few years of marriage, and without ending in divorce. When the system pulled us apart, we fought even harder to stick together. Much like a real life Romeo and Juliet story – the world didn’t want us to be with one another, but even if it meant our absolute destruction, we would be as we were meant to be. Your laws…your scarlet letters doled out effortlessly amongst whole families. They succeeded in hurting us, in tearing us to shreds, but they failed in keeping us apart in spirit and in love. For all your false sense of security is worth – is it truly worth our undeserved suffering? Is it worth the threats towards family? The sex offender registry destroyed every ounce of my husband’s self-esteem and convinced him that he was a monster, and not worthy of being loved for years. The system did not help him “reintegrate into society”, nor did they offer him housing when he was homeless, or counseling for the issues he was having like “How do I support my wife and kids when I am barely staying above water myself?” Can I be safe in knowing that if I get pulled over by a cop having a bad day, the cruiser camera won’t get turned off and I won’t be shot in the head just for being a sex offender? No one would investigate my death after all. So how can I be safe?” They didn’t bother offering the wives and children any kind of help, except classes on how to make sure he wouldn’t sexually attack one of us. No, instead they made him sit in the same room with dangerous offenders and listen to their horrors on how they would trap and abuse a child. What got them their kicks, and satisfactions in abusing a helpless child. He was forced to go home and throw up, cry for those poor children, and have nightmares. His “therapy” was to wake up in cold sweats, remembering details that a real violent offender might have revealed to a detective about what he did specifically to a child he sexually assaulted. My husband, he was changed – forever scared by these sessions with other grossly ill pedophiles he had been grouped in with and forced to hear every morbid detail of their crimes – because that method of “talking it out” was their way of achieving the goal of getting well. For the sake of keeping me from being forever changed as well, my husband has never uttered a word of what he’d heard in those counseling sessions he was ordered to endure. To even mention those sessions to him makes him turn white as a ghost to this day and want to hurl the contents of his stomach. He grieves for the children who had their innocence violated, and will grieve for them for the remainder of his life. THIS is your societies punishment to him. This is how we “reform” our sex offenders. No one really thinks about these things, you know. They don’t stop to realize the nasty details of a counseling session. People want to assume the candy-coated version is a bunch of men sitting in a circle sharing a “kumbaya” moment and talking about feelings. No one wants to think about having your genitals hooked up to a machine that measures your sexual response as you’re threatened with prison time if you fail to watch the rape and incest pictures of a child flashed onto a screen before your face, burned into your memory. This is our law and punishment. Segregation, humiliation, labeling, rejection, publication, ostracizing, and financially draining the registered sex offenders of our nation is just not enough of a punishment. We throw them all into one big lump of one title and without knowing who’s getting a kick out of hearing all the sick horror stories of those in counseling, and who’s actually revolted by the whole display and scarred for life – we just smooth it over with a nice, clean, tidy name for the method: “Reformation”. It took me years to show my husband that he could trust me; that I wasn’t just another sick person with an agenda to find someone to destroy, and turn on him with my black widow intentions. It wasn’t easy to gain his trust either. He shoved me away many times. He tried to tell me he was no good for me, and he’d destroy my life with his label. He even tried to run away from me several times. But I refuse to give into society’s close-minded thinking. I followed him, as a faithful wife who honestly believed with all of my heart that he was good and worthy of my love. I would not give up on real love. God brought this man into my life for a reason, and I to him. No matter how hard it had become in our lives together, I never once gave up. We had plenty of lawyers that would walk up to me and whisper into my ear, “Divorce him. You’ll look good to society for it, and you can secretly love him without shame. It’s for the best.” I was always so deeply offended by those suggestions. It was like telling a mother of a mentally retarded child to leave him in a nursing home and don’t mention him to your normal friends. Just secretly visit him and love him to yourself. Why should I feel shame? Why should my husband feel shame? He hurt no one, except for the 14 yr old rejected girl who had her feelings hurt for being refused, probably for the first time, by a man who gained some sense before he really did something wrong. For all we have been through, and continue to live through – I have but one thing left to say: This life I described could easily become yours or the life of a loved one. Think very carefully about what’s before you the next time you see a “sex offender” come up in your cozy little world. Not all of them are monsters. Many of them are men, who’ve been paying with their lives (in a not so literal sense) for 10 years, 15, 20, and even longer over something as simple as what my husband did. If you have a son, he could be next. If you have a daughter … well.. you get my point. God forbid the reader of my written testimony ever has to encounter such horrific treatment from his or her own kind, but if you do – please know you’re not alone. We suffer with you in silence. Stephanie – Loving wife to an RSO November 2009