She lists off the offenses that could put a person on a public list of social outcasts widely seen as pedophiles, predators and rapists:

You could be a sex offender if you go to a prostitute. You could be a sex offender if you urinate in public. You could be a sex offender if you go streaking. You could be a sex offender if you touch a stripper. You could be a sex offender if you dated a 15-year-old when you were 19-years-old.

What’s worse, “there are a lot of wrongful convictions in sex cases. A lot of wrongful accusations,” says William Dobbs, lawyer and civil libertarian based out of New York City.

Skenazy and Dobbs want sex offender registries eliminated in the United States. And they’re not alone. Although the vast majority of the American public supports the idea of using registries to keep a close eye on sex offenders, there are voices rising in opposition, saying that sex offender registries are ineffective and often horribly cruel.

The original goal of publishing a list of sex criminals was to protect communities. Parents who worried about the safety of their little ones could pull up a map of sex offenders in their area, and feel more secure knowing which neighbor was more likely to give their kid roofie-laced Halloween candy.

But the maps served the opposite purpose. Instead of feeling more secure, parents freaked out. They’d find that they’re surrounded by sexual deviants — that each dot on the map represents a sex offender, and their map is more speckled than a Jackson Pollock painting.

“It makes you think everyone who’s a dot raped a baby. It makes you think anyone convicted of a sex offense is a fiendish, depraved, child-pouncing predator who when given the chance will drag your child into the bushes,” Skenazy says.

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A new law that went into effect Sept. 1 bans the more than 17,000 registered sex offenders at the 163-year-old event. Supporters of the law say it protects children attending the fair from harm.

“It’s a place where there’s a lot of children, a lot of children running around, without direct parental supervision, who may be at risk if predators are around,” said Sen. Buck Newton, a Johnston County Republican who sponsored the bill. “It made sense to me. I don’t remember anyone voting against it.”

But the head of a new group that advocates on behalf of the state’s registered sex offenders says the law deprives an entire class of people of their civil rights. Robin Vanderwall, who co-founded the North Carolina chapter of Reform Sex Offender Laws (NCRSOL), said the group intends to file a lawsuit in federal court before year’s end seeking to have the new law declared unconstitutional.

The bill was introduced at the urging of state Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, who earlier this year said the state needs tougher laws to ban sex offenders from the fair. During the 2015 State Fair, Wake County sheriff’s deputies arrested four registered sex offenders at the fair, including someone who was initially charged with flying a drone over the event and a convicted child molester who was charged with posing as a state inspector to get into an area reserved for children’s rides.

Only one of the four was wearing an ankle bracelet that some sexual offenders are required to wear, said Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison. The bracelets are equipped with global positioning systems that enable probation and parole officials to monitor the wearer’s movements.

Harrison said his office is working with probation and post-supervision officers across the state to identify sex offenders who may try enter the fair. If a sex offender wearing an ankle bracelet gets within a certain distance of the event, someone will call the sheriff’s office, Harrison said.

“If the person is inside the fairgrounds, we will pass that individual’s picture out to our officers,” he said. “It’s a good game plan, and it’s evidently working. We haven’t had any arrests.”

State Fair spokesman Brian Long said the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services supported the bill and monitored its progress in the General Assembly, where it passed unanimously in both chambers and was signed by Gov. Pat McCrory on July 21.

“We wanted to make it clear because of the number of children who come here,” Long said. “It’s a child-oriented, family event. We wanted to keep it that way.”

But Vanderwall said it’s unfair to violate the civil rights of registered sex offenders who have served their criminal sentences and fulfilled all of their probation or post-release supervision obligations. He likened the new law to old Jim Crow laws.

“For the first time since 1891, thousands of North Carolina citizens and taxpayers are legally prohibited from attending the state fair,” Vanderwall said in a press release. “African Americans were officially ‘uninvited’ to attend in 1891 and remained ostracized from fair activities until the creation of so-called ‘Colored days’ in the early Twentieth Century.”

Vanderwall said that of the state’s more than 17,000 registered sex offenders, only 28 have been determined by the courts to be sexually violent predators. Vanderwall said the designation has to be declared by a judge who has reviewed expert testimony that shows an individual’s sexual predilections are untreatable and the person is mentally ill and likely to repeat the offense.

“I’m sure Donnie Harrison can flag 28 people to keep them out of the State Fair,” he said. “That’s easier than banning 17,000 people.”

Newton said state legislators who supported the law had “difficult decisions to make.”

“We have to respect the rights of people with a history [of sex offenses], against the legitimate work of trying to protect children against those who might commit future acts,” he said.

Source: The News & Observer