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.

MI- Accused teacher dies from hanging!

6-9-2004 Michigan:

A former Homer teacher was found dead Monday, hours before he was scheduled to be sentenced to prison for having sex with a student. Brian K. Corbitt, 28, was found hanged to death in an apparent suicide Monday in his home near Adrian.

Although the age of consent to have sex in Michigan is 16, Corbitt was charged under a law enacted in June 2003 making it illegal for a teacher to have sex with a student in the same school. Corbitt was the first person charged in Calhoun County with that violation and Hotchkiss said his client may be the first person charged similarly in Michigan. In a written statement to the court, Corbitt said he and the girl, now 17, began their relationship at school and first started having sex in March.

"It was absolutely consensual," Hotchkiss said. "That has never been disputed." In his written statement, Corbitt said, "I thought we were genuinely in love. I didn't know it was a crime." Corbitt, a graduate of Michigan State University, who received his master's degree this year, had been a teacher at Homer for three years and was the FFA adviser. ..Source.. by Trace Christenson

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.