Dear everyone,
My name is Loi Almeron and I'm a reporter at the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley. We've been looking into cases of juveniles being wrongfully placed on the registry and I'm wondering if there's anyone here who have heard of or have experienced such incident? We're still early on with our research, as we're still figuring out the scope of this problem. We know it happened in one state but possibilities lead us to think that it might be happening in other states as well. And one way for us to figure that out is to hear from people who are most affected by the registry. If anyone would be comfortable reaching out, please feel free to email me at loialmeron@berkeley.edu and I can tell you more about our reporting. Thank you so much.
I cannot help, but applaud your investigation.
“Placing children on the registry has to stop because it’s child abuse,” Pittman said.
Oregon has 25,000 citizens required to register, the highest number per capita in the nation. About 3,400 are registered for crimes committed as juveniles, about 11 percent of the total.
Before the law was changed, registrants had a small window of time in which they were eligible to apply for relief, a costly effort that can include hiring a lawyer, filing paperwork in court and attending hearings.
Juvenile registrants could apply no less than two years before and no more than five years after their adjudication, or they’d remain on the list forever.
“It was worded pretty poorly and strangely back then,” said Tim O’Donnell, Deputy District Attorney for Oregon’s Marion County. O’Donnell, who works in the county’s juvenile division, cautioned he spoke only for himself and not on behalf of the district attorney’s office.
Arrowwood said he missed that window because he didn’t know about it until it was too late.
“I’ve been registering for 18 years,” he said. “Now, I guess, they say I can never get off the list. I’ll be on it forever. I missed my opportunity, and I won’t ever be removed.”
But not everyone feels that he, or others, should be removed from the registry.
“I think oftentimes in our culture we spend a lot of time ruminating and thinking what happens to an offender and the impact that it has on them,” said BB Beltran, executive director for Sexual Assault Support Services of Oregon’s Lane County, where an estimated 187 offenders who committed crimes as children remain on the sex offenders’ registry.
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