Thank you for writing this article, for your work on behalf of legal reform for people with disabilities, but most of all for a lifetime of love and dedication to your son Adam.
The diverse population of people who read this website could hardly be grouped into any single political or ideological category, but it is still probably safe to say that we share a commitment to having the world unfold in a way that is better than it is now: less ugly, less cruel, less unjust. One of the things that seems reliably to move things at least a little in that direction is authentic contact with another person’s actual lived experience. We don’t seem to get that from logic or reason - as valuable and critical as they are - but the story of an actual person changes something in a fundamental way. We’ll never meet you or your husband or Adam but in a sense readers of your short article now know the three of you better than people we’ve talked to regularly for years. I don’t mean to be proscriptive. Nor do I suggest that people ought to suddenly raise the degree to which they take others into their confidence. Nonetheless, authenticity matters. It moves something in us. It makes us think. It makes us quieter, and we need that if there is to be any lasting progress.
Reasonable people can disagree about the particulars of legal reform with respect to people with disabilities, the likelihood of unintended consequences, and the unavoidable tradeoffs between justice and security. What we cannot do, after reading your story, is to persist in thinking of the people whom those generalized categories affect as cartoon figures. Thank you for making Adam real, and pushing all of the tangled mess in our legal institutions a little closer to the ideal of justice we all aim for.
Carol, thank you for this piece. As a survivor of a violent sexual assault by a (rumored on my college campus at the time) repeat offender, I sympathized greatly with your story but from a very different perspective. The goal of our criminal justice system should be to prevent recidivism and reintegrate individuals into society, and clearly the sex offender registry does not accomplish this as you laid out so well. It does not make survivors like myself more safe and provides no justice. The ordeal your family has endured is outrageous and unjust. Congratulations on a hard won victory in Virginia, and I sincerely hope you are able to secure a pardon for your son from the Governor.
the ridiculous consequences of these laws...and politicians who want to be "tough on crime" , hopefully you get the Pardon but then whoever their next political opponent is will be "they pardon sex offenders" in the campaign, it's utterly ridiculous. What happened to the sensible people in the world.
I felt the need to reply to your comment. You are certainly entitled to your opinion. I will tell you that as a small child I myself was sexually abused by the cute little old man who lived next door. All the neighbors liked him. My grandpa, who lived with us, was his close friend. He never hurt or threatened me. He fixed my bike, gave me candy and let me watch tv with him. He also abused me for about a year. I never told. My parents were great parents and gave me a wonderful life and protected me. However, it still happened. I have moved on and don’t really think about it much. I just felt you should know that the young man next store needed love and attention. As a Christian family we did what we could for him to make him feel loved. I don’t know why this happened but just like my own parents, we loved and cared for our family and others and did the best we could. Thanks you for your comments and I pray for you.
Thank you for writing with such eloquence about your family's heartbreaking ordeal. Your story and a couple of others I have read make it clear this system is in desperate need of reform.
I've turned away from this issue again and again, because it's fraught and so unpleasant to think about, even though usually when it has come to my attention, it's been about an injustice like the one that you and Adam have had to live with.
After your article, I won't turn away anymore. I'll be donating to the non-profit that you mention, and be writing to Governor Pritzker in support of Adam's pardon request. The Governor strikes me as a thoughtful, compassionate leader, and I hope that he responds favorably to your petition.
Thanks for this. I have long been opposed to these registries, ever since I heard about a case conforming to one of the categories you mentioned (a teenage boy having sex with his younger teen girlfriend, and her parents alerting the authorities, apparently out of anger). It's nice to know I'm not the only one, because this is the kind of issue where one is disinclined to speak out for fear of people questioning your character and/or motivations.
I've been told in the past that I would feel differently about this matter if I had children. Well now I do, and I've never even considered looking at one of these registries, partly because I seriously doubt their accuracy and efficacy, and partly because it feels more like ghoulish voyeurism than actual concern for children (the kind that apparently makes "To Catch a Predator" entertaining television). It breeds toxic mistrust in our communities, and surely bears some cause or effect relationship (perhaps both) to the fact that fewer and fewer people actually know their neighbors these days.
Ultimately, this is of a piece with our justice system's obsession with retribution at the expense of rehabilitation, and our society's overall rejection of empirical, evidenced based evaluation of policy in favor of rationalization by intuitive moralizing.
We see this same thing in our social justice movement's calls for "moral clarity", which all too often comes at the expense of factual clarity. Perhaps we should stop using the term "criminal justice system" altogether and start calling it something more like "criminal reform system". The "guilty" verdict should be a means, not an end.
Ms. Nesteikis, my heart goes out to you for the years of difficulty your family has endured to care for a disabled son. This case must have been devastating; it is always troubling when someone we love has been charged with, convicted of, or pleaded guilty to a serious crime. As an attorney I don’t comment or speculate on cases when I haven’t read the court record, but I do question why the attorney representing your son did not demand a psychological evaluation to determine if he was able to understand the charges or the court process. Criminal court judges always ask the defendant if they understand the charges against them and the defendant has to answer this question, not the attorney. If this didn’t happen then you have an issue for appeal of the trial court’s acceptance of his plea. Did your attorney explain that entry on a registry was a likely result of the plea? Did the court limit the number of years that he had to be registered (which judges often do when it’s a teen/teen case)? Did the judge have discretion or was he/she required to impose the registry requirement? If so, then the solution is to grant the judge discretion or lessen the impact on teens, not to eliminate the registry. These are the questions that jump out to me. Along with other attorneys who represent children pro bono in domestic violence and sexual abuse cases I am a proponent of this list. Like any regulation it can be used improperly, and it may well have been in your case, but as a policy matter it is a positive enhancement to our criminal process. Parents of young children are forewarned if there is someone living nearby who could potentially be a threat to their children’s safety and can protect them more effectively. I would like to see the research you rely on when you state that “the majority” of those on the registry are not a danger to the public. The crime of interference with a child is a nonviolent misdemeanor (or felony) but nonviolence does not mean not a threat. I only know what I have seen, which is that more people get away with child sexual abuse than are convicted of it. Children are too afraid to talk. A friend of mine was abused by her father repeatedly from the time she was three until age 13, when there was a risk of pregnancy and discovery. He threatened to hang her rabbit and beat it to death (and beat her) if she told, so she never did. This is the reality of the crime; it places a life sentence on the victim but not the predator, and recidivism is common. And as you describe, the crime is passed on generationally, multiplying its effect on the community. A personal concern is that the punishment for abusing someone else’s child is more severe than the punishment for abusing one’s own (often a felony vs. a misdemeanor) because in an old-fashioned way the law often treats children as their parent’s property. Take a look at your state’s laws and see if they differentiate. If I were to describe facts in the cases I have worked on, this post would be removed as inappropriate for public viewing. Perhaps instead of trying to dismantle the registry system you instead work toward tiered enforcement, such as increased judiciary discretion, registry during a shortened period of probation for teens, but permanent listing for recidivists. This would help to support the community’s need to protect its children but also the unfairness of a lifelong listing for dumb teen missteps.
I have a disabled nephew much like your son, and I understand your position and thank your for writing your story and I hope and pray you get the reform that is so desperately needed in cases like yours. The registry is not for people like your son or for teen couples who make teen-like choices when they are so young. It is for, I believe, those those who are a real threat to children in our society and may reoffend, like the older man at our local schoolyard who was walking his cute little dog when I was walking mine. We stopped to chat (he seemed nice and I had seen him several times there) and compare pups, and he shared that he liked to walk his dog in the school yard because it attracted "the little girls." The moment he said those last three words a chill went over me. We talked a few minutes more and I excused myself and walked my dog home. I spent an hour thinking over what he had said and talking to my husband, not wanting to overreact. After an hour, I went to our local offender registry online (we live in a small city), and I found the photo of the dog walker in two minutes listing his convictions with children. He lived less than a mile from the school, so I called the police, as I had seen him in the yard several times. They were great. We need to use better discernment in placing people in registries so that they protect children and citizens, but do not ruin the lives of those like your son and others mentioned above.
Carol, as an Illinois resident, I've just put in a request to the governor to have your son pardoned, as well as to have the state's registry reformed. I've been haunted by this story since reading it yesterday, and I hope you get the pardon Adam and your family deserves.
Thank you for writing this article, for your work on behalf of legal reform for people with disabilities, but most of all for a lifetime of love and dedication to your son Adam.
The diverse population of people who read this website could hardly be grouped into any single political or ideological category, but it is still probably safe to say that we share a commitment to having the world unfold in a way that is better than it is now: less ugly, less cruel, less unjust. One of the things that seems reliably to move things at least a little in that direction is authentic contact with another person’s actual lived experience. We don’t seem to get that from logic or reason - as valuable and critical as they are - but the story of an actual person changes something in a fundamental way. We’ll never meet you or your husband or Adam but in a sense readers of your short article now know the three of you better than people we’ve talked to regularly for years. I don’t mean to be proscriptive. Nor do I suggest that people ought to suddenly raise the degree to which they take others into their confidence. Nonetheless, authenticity matters. It moves something in us. It makes us think. It makes us quieter, and we need that if there is to be any lasting progress.
Reasonable people can disagree about the particulars of legal reform with respect to people with disabilities, the likelihood of unintended consequences, and the unavoidable tradeoffs between justice and security. What we cannot do, after reading your story, is to persist in thinking of the people whom those generalized categories affect as cartoon figures. Thank you for making Adam real, and pushing all of the tangled mess in our legal institutions a little closer to the ideal of justice we all aim for.
What you are going through is terrible. Thank you for writing about it. You are educating a lot of people.
Carol, thank you for this piece. As a survivor of a violent sexual assault by a (rumored on my college campus at the time) repeat offender, I sympathized greatly with your story but from a very different perspective. The goal of our criminal justice system should be to prevent recidivism and reintegrate individuals into society, and clearly the sex offender registry does not accomplish this as you laid out so well. It does not make survivors like myself more safe and provides no justice. The ordeal your family has endured is outrageous and unjust. Congratulations on a hard won victory in Virginia, and I sincerely hope you are able to secure a pardon for your son from the Governor.
the ridiculous consequences of these laws...and politicians who want to be "tough on crime" , hopefully you get the Pardon but then whoever their next political opponent is will be "they pardon sex offenders" in the campaign, it's utterly ridiculous. What happened to the sensible people in the world.
That's a painful, tragic and infuriating story. I pray that you succeed in your quest for a pardon.
Chimichangas06
I felt the need to reply to your comment. You are certainly entitled to your opinion. I will tell you that as a small child I myself was sexually abused by the cute little old man who lived next door. All the neighbors liked him. My grandpa, who lived with us, was his close friend. He never hurt or threatened me. He fixed my bike, gave me candy and let me watch tv with him. He also abused me for about a year. I never told. My parents were great parents and gave me a wonderful life and protected me. However, it still happened. I have moved on and don’t really think about it much. I just felt you should know that the young man next store needed love and attention. As a Christian family we did what we could for him to make him feel loved. I don’t know why this happened but just like my own parents, we loved and cared for our family and others and did the best we could. Thanks you for your comments and I pray for you.
Thank you for writing with such eloquence about your family's heartbreaking ordeal. Your story and a couple of others I have read make it clear this system is in desperate need of reform.
Thank you for this article.
I've turned away from this issue again and again, because it's fraught and so unpleasant to think about, even though usually when it has come to my attention, it's been about an injustice like the one that you and Adam have had to live with.
After your article, I won't turn away anymore. I'll be donating to the non-profit that you mention, and be writing to Governor Pritzker in support of Adam's pardon request. The Governor strikes me as a thoughtful, compassionate leader, and I hope that he responds favorably to your petition.
God bless you and your family.
Thanks for this. I have long been opposed to these registries, ever since I heard about a case conforming to one of the categories you mentioned (a teenage boy having sex with his younger teen girlfriend, and her parents alerting the authorities, apparently out of anger). It's nice to know I'm not the only one, because this is the kind of issue where one is disinclined to speak out for fear of people questioning your character and/or motivations.
I've been told in the past that I would feel differently about this matter if I had children. Well now I do, and I've never even considered looking at one of these registries, partly because I seriously doubt their accuracy and efficacy, and partly because it feels more like ghoulish voyeurism than actual concern for children (the kind that apparently makes "To Catch a Predator" entertaining television). It breeds toxic mistrust in our communities, and surely bears some cause or effect relationship (perhaps both) to the fact that fewer and fewer people actually know their neighbors these days.
Ultimately, this is of a piece with our justice system's obsession with retribution at the expense of rehabilitation, and our society's overall rejection of empirical, evidenced based evaluation of policy in favor of rationalization by intuitive moralizing.
We see this same thing in our social justice movement's calls for "moral clarity", which all too often comes at the expense of factual clarity. Perhaps we should stop using the term "criminal justice system" altogether and start calling it something more like "criminal reform system". The "guilty" verdict should be a means, not an end.
Ms. Nesteikis, my heart goes out to you for the years of difficulty your family has endured to care for a disabled son. This case must have been devastating; it is always troubling when someone we love has been charged with, convicted of, or pleaded guilty to a serious crime. As an attorney I don’t comment or speculate on cases when I haven’t read the court record, but I do question why the attorney representing your son did not demand a psychological evaluation to determine if he was able to understand the charges or the court process. Criminal court judges always ask the defendant if they understand the charges against them and the defendant has to answer this question, not the attorney. If this didn’t happen then you have an issue for appeal of the trial court’s acceptance of his plea. Did your attorney explain that entry on a registry was a likely result of the plea? Did the court limit the number of years that he had to be registered (which judges often do when it’s a teen/teen case)? Did the judge have discretion or was he/she required to impose the registry requirement? If so, then the solution is to grant the judge discretion or lessen the impact on teens, not to eliminate the registry. These are the questions that jump out to me. Along with other attorneys who represent children pro bono in domestic violence and sexual abuse cases I am a proponent of this list. Like any regulation it can be used improperly, and it may well have been in your case, but as a policy matter it is a positive enhancement to our criminal process. Parents of young children are forewarned if there is someone living nearby who could potentially be a threat to their children’s safety and can protect them more effectively. I would like to see the research you rely on when you state that “the majority” of those on the registry are not a danger to the public. The crime of interference with a child is a nonviolent misdemeanor (or felony) but nonviolence does not mean not a threat. I only know what I have seen, which is that more people get away with child sexual abuse than are convicted of it. Children are too afraid to talk. A friend of mine was abused by her father repeatedly from the time she was three until age 13, when there was a risk of pregnancy and discovery. He threatened to hang her rabbit and beat it to death (and beat her) if she told, so she never did. This is the reality of the crime; it places a life sentence on the victim but not the predator, and recidivism is common. And as you describe, the crime is passed on generationally, multiplying its effect on the community. A personal concern is that the punishment for abusing someone else’s child is more severe than the punishment for abusing one’s own (often a felony vs. a misdemeanor) because in an old-fashioned way the law often treats children as their parent’s property. Take a look at your state’s laws and see if they differentiate. If I were to describe facts in the cases I have worked on, this post would be removed as inappropriate for public viewing. Perhaps instead of trying to dismantle the registry system you instead work toward tiered enforcement, such as increased judiciary discretion, registry during a shortened period of probation for teens, but permanent listing for recidivists. This would help to support the community’s need to protect its children but also the unfairness of a lifelong listing for dumb teen missteps.
Deavstating...but so glad you are making inroads. And telling the world. Heart-rending story
I have a disabled nephew much like your son, and I understand your position and thank your for writing your story and I hope and pray you get the reform that is so desperately needed in cases like yours. The registry is not for people like your son or for teen couples who make teen-like choices when they are so young. It is for, I believe, those those who are a real threat to children in our society and may reoffend, like the older man at our local schoolyard who was walking his cute little dog when I was walking mine. We stopped to chat (he seemed nice and I had seen him several times there) and compare pups, and he shared that he liked to walk his dog in the school yard because it attracted "the little girls." The moment he said those last three words a chill went over me. We talked a few minutes more and I excused myself and walked my dog home. I spent an hour thinking over what he had said and talking to my husband, not wanting to overreact. After an hour, I went to our local offender registry online (we live in a small city), and I found the photo of the dog walker in two minutes listing his convictions with children. He lived less than a mile from the school, so I called the police, as I had seen him in the yard several times. They were great. We need to use better discernment in placing people in registries so that they protect children and citizens, but do not ruin the lives of those like your son and others mentioned above.
Carol, as an Illinois resident, I've just put in a request to the governor to have your son pardoned, as well as to have the state's registry reformed. I've been haunted by this story since reading it yesterday, and I hope you get the pardon Adam and your family deserves.
A moving story. Please let us know how we can do more for this cause.
Very informative and enlightening. Thank you for another article offering and alternative view point