Laws on Child Molestation

While conducting my research for this essay on child molestation I decided to focus on the laws that are put in place to govern and track sex offenders. Before 1994, few states required convicted sex offenders to register their addresses with local law enforcement. As recognition of the severity of this problem grew, Congress passed the Jacob Wetterling Crimes against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Act, 42 U.S.C. §§14071, et seq. ("Wetterling Act"). This requires state implementation of a sex-offender registration program or a 10 percent forfeiture of federal funds for state and local law enforcement under the Byrne Grant Program of the U.S. Department of Justice. Today, all fifty states and Washington, D.C. have sex offender registries. ("National center for," 2011) Even though these laws were implemented to track the whereabouts of the sexual offenders, most of them do not register and they go undetected in our communities. The legal system has failed in protecting our children from repeat sexual offenders because of the ineffectiveness in the current laws, treatment facilities inability to rehabilitate sex offenders, and the failure of each state's ability to properly track and superintend registered sex-offenders whereabouts at all times.

In October 2010, Amazon started selling an e-book written and published by Philip R. Greaves II, the book was titled "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct". The book purpose was to instruct pedophiles on how to treat a child and make them comfortable while they are molested. According to Philip R. Greaves II, "I wrote the book to establish guidelines so that people would behave in a manner that is non-injurious to each other, for one, and, for two, to communicate the fact that these people who are so

Different in maturation, etc., that when they develop relationships, they use certain principles that regular people, adults, would be well to attend." This book created outrage in society and thousands of people boycotted Amazons decision to sell this book. Fortunately, the state of Florida found Mr. Greaves' e-book in violation of Title XLVI Chapter 847.012 (Harmful materials; sale or distribution to minors or using minors in production prohibited; penalty.) and 847.0125 (Retail display of materials harmful to minors prohibited.) He was arrested in December 2010 after Florida deputies ordered a copy of the book and had it mailed to a Lakeland address. A Polk County judge issued a warrant for Greaves' arrest, and he was extradited to Florida from his home state of Colorado. ("Phillip greaves, author," 2011) Amazon defended their selling of the book based on the first Amendment of the US Constitution, which is the freedom of speech. This instance alone shows how the laws can be manipulated to work in the favor of anyone. Even though the constitution is what we base our everyday lives on, it was written when things were simple. In the more recent years, people have changed and crimes have gotten worse. Most laws are based off the Constitution, which means the Constitution need to be modified to include stricter punishments.

Researching the statistical data about the percentage of children being abuse in America today is astounding. According to Child Molestation Laws, "Nearly half of the victims are under the age of 18;1 in 6 boys will be sexually molested by age of 18; 1 in 4 girls will be sexually molested by age 18; most offenders are 10 or more years older than the victim". This information bothered me. Today there are approximately 1.3 million children