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34 New Eng. J. on Crim. & Civ. Confinement 459 (2008)
Children Sex Offenders: How the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act Hurts the Same Children it is Trying to Protect

handle is hein.journals/nejccc34 and id is 463 raw text is: Children Sex Offenders:

How the Adam Walsh Child Protection
and Safety Act Hurts the Same Children it
is Trying to Protect
I. INTRODUCTION
One afternoon, while I was clerking in a law office, a woman walked in
with her adorable four-year-old daughter. She sat behind the large
mahogany desk and began to tell her story like most clients did from 3:00-
5:00 p.m. However, this woman was different. She was a mother scared for
her daughter and terrified for her thirteen-year-old son. She was stuck in
the middle of the love for her children and the realities of the judicial
system.
Several weeks prior, the woman's daughter came to her laughing, while
telling her that her brother had her perform, what the mother later
determined to be, oral sex on him. Horrified, the mother talked to her son.
He explained that he found a picture on the Internet and was curious. One
day while she was gone for twenty minutes, the son and daughter
experimented. What this little boy did not know, nor could he understand,
was that this single act would change the rest of his life. The mother,
heartbroken, took her son to a psychiatrist for counseling. The counselor
then turned to the authorities. The desperate cry from the mother for help
ultimately caused her son to be taken out of the home and investigated for
felony charges.
Throughout the rest of this Note, keep this boy in mind because families
in similar situations are also being hurt when a juvenile is treated and
punished as an adult. If he is charged and found guilty, he will have to
register as a sex offender for fifteen years to life.' His school, any future
1. Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, Pub. L. No. 109-248, 120
Stat. 587 § 115.

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