Military Sex Offender Registries, or the Lack Thereof
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By Brittany Stalsburg
Brittany Stalsburg is a political science PhD candidate and Policy Associate for SWAN. Her academic work focuses on parenthood, gender, and political candidacy.
This week marks the 5th anniversary of former President Bush’s signing of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which set strict and comprehensive national standards for states’ maintenance of sex offender registries. With looming deadlines to prove states have met the requirements, Emanuella Grinberg reports on CNN.com that only 14 states, 9 tribes, and the territory of Guam have “substantially implemented” the act’s requirements.
While the focus of this article is on different viewpoints regarding the utility of sex offender registries, Linda Baldwin, director of the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (known as the SMART office) brings up an important point about sex registries: not all sexual predators actually get included on these lists:
Online registries don’t include everyone who is a threat, she said, because not all dangerous predators are known to law enforcement.
One of these key groups that often gets left off of these lists includes members of the military and veterans who have committed crimes of rape and sexual assault. Because sexually violent servicemembers are normally tried in the military justice system, convicted sex offenders who re-enter the civilian world often escape detection, as civilian law enforcement usually have no way of knowing a veteran’s military criminal record. Furthermore, the military itself does not maintain a sex offender registry that can alert servicemembers, unit commanders, communities and civilian law enforcement to the presence and movement of military sexual predators. This is a problem not only for civilian communities who unknowingly are living among thousands of veterans who have committed rape or sexual assault while in service, but also for servicemembers who are forced to work in close quarters with convicted rapists, also without knowing their criminal history. Ample evidence indicates that rapists are often serial rapists, with one study finding repeat rapists average 5.8 rapes each, which underscores the need for servicemembers to know that they are working and living among sexual predators.
With over 19,000 military sexual assaults estimated to have occurred in 2010 alone, it is unconscionable for the military to permit sex offenders to roam free, their crimes unbeknownst to potential future victims. SWAN is working with several lawmakers to push forward legislation that would require the Department of Defense to maintain a sex offender registry similar to those that exist in the civilian world. Our servicemembers bravely expose themselves to dangerous, life-threatening situations every day; unknowingly working alongside dangerous sexual predators should not be one of them.
5 years later, states struggle to comply with federal sex offender law – Emanuella Grinberg, CNN.com
Repeat Rape and Multiple Offending Among Undetected Rapists – David Lisak and Paul M. Miller
Honestly, are we really surprised? Crimes against women largely go unpunished. If it is a crime that predominately effects women, you can always rest assured no one cares.