The death of Christian Adamek and zero tolerance insanity

10-2-2013 Alabama:

Christian Adamek, 15, hanged himself after getting in trouble for doing something that wasn't evil, wasn't a threat to anyone's safety, and wasn't a big deal to any rational person. Christian landed himself in big trouble for streaking across the field during a football game at his high school.

Before Christian's death, the school's principal said the teen's stunt could warrant legal charges atop school discipline. "There's the legal complications," the principal told a news station. "Public lewdness and court consequences outside of school with the legal system, as well as the school consequences that the school system has set up."

Adolescent Brain Development
and Legal Culpability

Christian's death is tragic. Was it prompted by the prospect of an overblown reaction to his schoolboy prank? We don't know for sure. Regardless, Christian deserved detention, not to have his name slapped on a sex offender registry along with rapists. If Christian took his life over the prospect of having his life destroyed by vindictive adults who think streaking is on a continuum with rape, then we've all got blood on our hands.

Essay: Sex and Justice

Essay: Sex and Justice - 11.16.2010

A recent horrifying case involving teen suicide has gotten wide attention. The case got Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry thinking about the state’s sex offender registry.

If news is what people are talking about, then the big story in Michigan last week wasn’t the budget deficit, or Governor-elect Rick Snyder’s efforts to put together an administration.

No, the big story was a horrifying case where a fourteen-year-old girl killed herself after having sex with an eighteen-year-old boy.

And it ought to make us all think about a lot of things, including whether the Michigan Sex Offender registry makes any sense.

In this tragic case, both teens at first told police the act was consensual, but later the girl appeared on local TV news, and said she had been raped. Following that, the kids in her high school evidently turned on her. Eventually, the child went home and hung herself. This story is distressing on too many levels to count.

Whatever actually happened between the teens is hard to determine, though police say the girl said she told the boy she was eager to lose her virginity. If so, she later had second thoughts. As a journalist, I am appalled that a local so-called news station put this child on TV, identifying her by name, as she talked about her sex life.

Grownups ought to know how cruel the world can be.

But this whole episode really ought to draw attention to an appalling institution called the Michigan Sex Offender Registry.

Since the 1990s, the registry has listed anyone convicted of a so-called sex crime and indicates where they live. The idea was to protect children by allowing families to discover if a convicted sex offender lives in the neighborhood.

That may make some sense in the case of serious pedophiles, though it also could be seen as a dangerous invitation to vigilante action. But the registry also includes those convicted of a wide variety of far lesser offenses, including drunk frat boys who relieved themselves in public. They are on there with the serial rapists.

The main problem is in cases like this one. In Michigan sixteen is the legal age of consent. But in our highly sexualized society, there are many sixteen year old boys who are active with their almost sixteen year old girlfriends. Legally, they are committing a felony.

Stepmother of 38-year-old man accused of shooting teen girl in murder-suicide says he snapped, 'was just a lost soul looking for someone to love him'

Posted in Related Deaths

11-4-2010 Michigan:

MONROE -- Family of 38-year-old Raymond Bush, who police say abducted and fatally shot a 15-year-old Evart girl before taking his own life, defended him today as a good person who simply snapped.

Bush and the girl, Taylor Manley, had been in a relationship for about a year, said Bush's stepmother, Maryann Bush.

"I think he was just a lost soul looking for someone to love him," she said.

Bush was the father of a 17-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son from previous relationships. He bought and fixed-up a van for his daughter, who recently gave birth.

Maryann Bush said her stepson was afraid of going to jail after he was charged with sexually assaulting Taylor.

She is upset that others are portraying Bush as a pedophile.

"We all know that two families are suffering, but people are portraying him like he's a real bad person. But that's not like it was," Maryann Bush said.

She claimed Bush, who was not working, did not have a criminal record.

Oseceola County prosecutors say Taylor planned to testify against Bush at a probable cause hearing Wednesday, but Bush believed she would not.

Bush and Taylor got to know each other because she once lived next door to the grandparents of his son, in the Monroe area.

On Wednesday, Bush talked to his ex-girlfriend on the phone and later stopped at her home. Bush allegedly told the ex-girlfriend he killed Taylor and planned to kill himself because "that was the only way they could be together."

Maryann Bush believes the stress of the criminal charges and being under order not to contact Taylor made him snap. ..Source.. by John Tunison | The Grand Rapids Press

Local teen commits suicide in prison

3-20-2010 New York:

A Hudson Falls teen who was serving a prison sentence for child sexual abuse hanged himself Friday in a state prison in Dutchess County, officials said.

Adam D. Wheeler's death came just weeks after he was paroled from state prison, but he was sent back because he didn't find a "suitable" residence after he was paroled, officials said.

Wheeler, 19, died at Downstate Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Fishkill, where he was being held in recent weeks on a 2007 conviction for first-degree sexual abuse.

He was sentenced to 3 years in prison and 5 years on parole in that case, and was paroled in December.

But according to the state Division of Parole, he was charged with violating his parole because he did not find a residence that his parole officer approved of.

Carol Weaver, a spokeswoman for the Division of Parole, said the agency was working with the Washington County Department of Social Services to find some place for Wheeler to live, but parole officials did not believe he was cooperating with them.

He was returned to prison on Feb. 9, and would not have been eligible for release again until December.

Linda Foglia, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Correctional Services, acknowledged Wheeler's death occurred in Downstate Correctional Facility, but said she could not disclose the cause of death because of privacy rules.

MI- BRIAN DICKERSON: A plea deal thwarted, a life is ended

3-24-2004 Michigan:

Ernest Hemingway wrote that every true story ends in death.

This is a true story.

It begins two years ago with a troubled 14-year-old girl who documented her sexual exploits in a diary. She called herself a predator. But Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca was more interested in her slightly older sex partners. He charged four of them with criminal sexual conduct, a felony.

In May 2002, when what became known as the Bloomfield Sex Diary case broke, I argued that Gorcyca had overreacted by bringing criminal charges for what amounted to consensual sex between promiscuous teenagers. I noted that, if convicted, the defendants would be listed on Michigan's sex-offender registry until they reached middle age.

After a public uproar, Gorcyca relented. Under a plea agreement blessed by two sentencing judges, all four defendants were permitted to plead guilty to a lesser charge of seduction. The prosecutor and defense attorneys agreed that none of the defendants would be imprisoned or listed on the sex-offender registry.

The 14-year-old girl and her parents were relieved by the deal. "We didn't have an ax to grind," the girl's attorney, Mayer Morganroth, recalled this week. "Nobody wanted to see these young kids stigmatized for life."

It should have ended there -- a fiasco averted, a case of overzealous prosecution brought to a sane resolution.

But it didn't.

Last month, more than a year after the charges against them were resolved, all four defendants were notified they'd be registered as sex offenders after all.

One of them, 20-year-old Justin Fawcett of West Bloomfield, was particularly devastated. On Feb. 27, three days after Fawcett's probation officer broke the news that he'd be publicly branded for the next 23 years, Fawcett's father e-mailed me to express his fear that Justin would kill himself.

FL- Metrorail Jumper Faced Sex Assault Trial

Arrested In February 2007 For Sexual Assault On A Minor

Family Says He Remains In A Coma, Little Hope Of Recovery

4-30-2008 Florida:

MIAMI (CBS4) ― An upcoming sexual assault trial and possible deportation reportedly drove a teen to jump in front of an oncoming Metrorail in Coral Gables.

19-year old Jose Camilo Molina Rezk remains in a coma at the Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital. His family told CBS4's news partners at the Miami Herald they've been informed there's little chance of recovery.

In February, 2007, Molina-Rezk was arrested and charged with felony sexual assault and lewd and lascivious behavior by someone over 18 on a child under 12. He spent 3 months in jail before being released on monitored house arrest to await trial.

Molina-Rezk, a Design and Architecture Senior High School graduate, had hoped to serve in the military in Colombia, then follow in his stepfather's footsteps and become an architect.

Inmate, 17, hangs himself at Rikers

1-6-2008 New York

A Mount Vernon teen hanged himself at Rikers Island after the jail failed to follow a Queens judge's order to place the inmate under suicide watch, lawyers charged Saturday.

David Mercado, 17, was supposed to be placed under round-the-clock protection after a Dec. 17 arrest in Queens on statutory rape charges that said he had sex with a 14-year-old girl.

But within 24 hours he hanged himself, attorneys for Mercado's family said.

"A judge ordered that he be placed on suicide watch," said lawyer Andrew Stoll, who will file a claim this week against the Correction Department.

"The Corrections Department knew that, and the level of care they gave him was plainly below standard."

Mercado, who lingered in a coma at Elmhurst Hospital for nine days before dying Dec. 30, was not diagnosed as depressed, but was put on suicide watch by Judge Gene Lopez after recommendations from Mercado's legal aide attorney.

Correction Dept. spokesman Stephen Morello said Mercado was not placed under suicide watch, insisting that a medical exam found he was not a threat to himself.

"Every inmate is given a medical examination - both physical and psychological - and this inmate was cleared to be housed in general population," said Morello, who noted that the death remains under investigation. ..more.. by