I hope to avoid any sort of justification or moralizing by sharing the details and feelings around my experience, but I think it will help to provide some background to understand how and what happened. I also want to say that addiction and recovery are inextricably linked to my sex offense and will be mentioned to provide context to many of the situations discussed herein.

My sex offense took place in 2011 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, when I was 23 years old. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, and moved to Minneapolis to attend college at the end of 2008. I graduated in June 2010, but did not end up pursuing a career in the field I studied. Instead, I worked dead-end food service jobs and was feeling rather hopeless about the future. I’d been in a relationship with a woman for about six months at the time I graduated, however we were both using drugs and alcohol and I’d begun to slip pretty deep into addiction. I’d come from a family with two older brothers who abused drugs, and I swore I’d never follow their path, but still found myself in that place anyway. The relationship with my girlfriend really started to go south around November and December of that year, and she eventually broke it off around Christmas time. I was devastated, having never been broken up with before then, and didn’t have the support I needed to cope with what had happened. Around the same time, I developed a severe neurological disorder which further affected my mood and disposition. I began to use more drugs and alcohol, seeking some sort of relief from the pain I was experiencing.

I’d begun using a blog website called Tumblr some months before the break-up, mostly as a way to showcase music and art projects I’d been working on. At some point I was turned on to the darker side of Tumblr, seeing users who would post gore, pornography and other sorts of shocking, irreverent content. I had sort of grown up on the internet, and was aware of all the violent and disturbing images that were available, but hadn’t taken a huge interest in it before then. I became more and more intrigued with gore and pornography amidst what was going on in my life in early 2011, and began to seek it out and post content I’d found around the internet on my own page. After a while, posting on Tumblr became a serious fascination and preoccupation of mine. I’d spend hours seeking out content to post to the site to attract followers and get “likes”. At times, I would get drunk and belligerent and post increasingly more extreme photos and videos as a means to attack those who looked at my page. I’d started to see the people who visited my page as a microcosm of the real world; a society that I felt had forced me into misery and despair. This was my way of getting revenge.

Since adopting this perspective of alienation and retribution, I became ever more focused on posting content that would shock and disgust viewers. I would seek out the most vile, contemptible images I could find in hopes that it would garner some sort of attention, albeit negative or inflammatory. On a handful of occasions, I sought out and re-posted child pornography I had found on the internet. I knew that child pornography was illegal and immoral, but wasn’t in the right state to consider the consequences of seeking it out or re-posting it online. My ability to discern and make good decisions was further hindered by my drug and alcohol abuse, which left me unable or unwilling to recognize or care about those I hurt. My primary focus at that point was creating more content for the blog.

The reckoning came in May 2011 when my home was raided by the police. All of my computers and mass storage devices were seized, and I was taken into a bedroom for questioning. I was told there had been a report of child pornography being posted from the IP address at this residence. I confessed that it was me who had posted the child pornography, but told them there wouldn’t be anything saved on any of the computers or anything else I owned (I would only save the images to post and then delete them afterwards). They appreciated my confession, but told me they would have to keep everything for further investigation. While the raid and seizure of my property was a relief in the sense that it meant I didn’t have to continue with what I’d been doing, the whole experience had been extremely jarring. I didn’t think of myself as a pedophile or sex offender or any of the labels you hear about. I was terrified to tell anyone about what had happened, and for a long time I kept it a secret. My parents and a few close friends knew, but otherwise I didn’t feel as though I could trust anyone with that information for fear that they would judge or reject me.

I tried to carry on as usual in Minneapolis, but the stress, paranoia and shame really got to me, and I ended up moving back with my parents in Illinois. I received a letter in November 2012 stating that I was being charged with felony possession of child pornography. I found out that even if you delete images from your PC, they are still stored in the unallocated space on the hard drive unless you wipe that too. I was completely overwhelmed and horrified receiving that letter. I’d expected that I would get away with a slap on the wrist or a minor infraction, so this was the worst thing I could have imagined. The charge prompted about a year of trips back and forth to Minnesota to meet with lawyers and therapists and to attend court proceedings. I was told I’d committed a very serious offense and was likely to have a lengthy stay in jail/prison and a long-term probation sentence, not to mention having to register as a sex offender.

I was eventually convicted of felony possession of child pornography in September 2013 and sentenced to a week in jail, two years of probation, a sex offender treatment program, no contact with minors and ten years on the sex offender registry. After the conviction, I arranged to have the probation and other parts of the sentence moved to Illinois, where I was living at the time. I quickly found out that the conditions in the area I lived in were completely different than what they would have been in Minnesota. I was automatically moved from what was the lowest tier offender in Minnesota (limited restrictions, no public registration) to the highest tier in Illinois. This meant I could not live within a mile of anyone under the age of 18 or a public school, could not visit public parks, lifetime on the sex offender registry, along with a host of other terms.

I received a call one morning from my new probation officer telling me that I had to vacate my parents’ house since my brother’s children were there at the time, so I moved in with a neighbor for about a week. I received a call the next week telling me I had to vacate that home as well. The same thing happened again after I moved into an Extended Stay hotel over the weekend. I tried to reason with my probation officer that I was having trouble finding somewhere to live that would meet the requirements of my sentence, and was told that a number of clients were homeless on the streets or in a group home and that’s likely what I would have to do as well. In light of these restrictions, I chose to move back to Minneapolis.

I moved back to Minneapolis in October 2013 and began attending a sex offender treatment program called PPI in June 2014. I was required to attend a group meeting once a week, and two individual meetings with a therapist twice a month. I found the program extremely uncomfortable and resisted treatment for a long time. I would say that I struggled more than most, primarily because I had continued to use drugs while in the program, but also because I didn’t think that I had the same problems the other guys did. I was meeting with my probation officer once a month and expressed these grievances to her, but her mind was unchanged. I faked it for a couple years at PPI, eventually getting kicked out of the group for getting a DWI in October 2016. To use an old cliché, that DWI was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It allowed me to find and focus on recovery while I wasn’t in the group. I started regularly attending 12-step meetings and became involved in the fellowship. I’d been struggling with addiction for a long time, and it finally clicked that I wasn’t going to be able to complete the sex offender treatment or probation until I addressed the elephant in the room.

I was allowed to re-enter PPI in June 2017 after demonstrating that I was staying clean and involved in my recovery. Since taking some time off to get my head on straight, I felt much more motivated to complete the program, and was willing to accept the help being offered. The assignments we were required to complete for the program did help provide clarity and promote reflection on my sex offense and what had caused it to happen. I was happy to be surrounded by others who had experienced the same or similar and could relate and offer support.

I wish I could say that the experience at PPI was totally positive, but that wasn’t my experience and I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the more negative aspects of the program. Polygraphs were given regularly at your own expense, and you would be held back if you didn’t pass. I was required to write up a safety plan for going anywhere in public where children or vulnerable adults might be, just in case I was going to harm them. One of the assignments we had to do was called the phallometric exam – they attach a cable to your genitals that measures your level of arousal when shown images of males and females of various ages. We were required to check in weekly about how many times we masturbated or had sex with someone else. One of the assignments required us to explain in detail in group about our sexuality and who we are attracted to. These are just a few examples, or what came to mind. Perhaps it doesn’t seem like too much to ask in exchange for spending years in prison, but I found some of what we did to be humiliating, degrading and of no benefit. Overall, my experience at PPI was neither one hundred percent positive or negative. It was the hardest, most stressful thing I’ve ever done in my life, but it also gave me a lot of insight into my sex offense and provided me with a large support network of other people with an historic sex offense who are trying to do better. I feel like I aged twenty years in the three or so years I was in the program. I spent so much time worrying about being permanently labeled, and what that meant, and how I could change it. All I had to do was embrace it and move forward, which was easier said than done.

I graduated from PPI in September 2018, and was released from probation the same month. I was required to attend an aftercare program for six months after my graduation, but it was only once a month and was far less intense than the main program. The felony was reduced to a gross misdemeanor once the terms of the probation were complete. My life really began to open up again after I was done with all the programming and legal issues, and I’ve been fortunate enough to build a support system that I love and trust. I’ve been able to let more people in about my past sex offense, and feel more supported than I ever have before.

Despite all of the work I’ve put in and positive changes I’ve seen in my life, there is still a lot hanging over me. I am still required to register in person with the police, and because I had gotten a DWI in 2016, the counter started over from the date of the last conviction. As part of my registration, I am required to notify law enforcement if I move, change jobs, get a new car, and get fingerprinted and photographed if I move to a new city. Every time I have to update my registration or transfer it to a new city or state, I fear that some minor issue is going to lead to my arrest or somehow land me back in jail. I’ve done my best to be proactive at managing my registration, but sometimes it feels like the information just isn’t out there, and there’s nobody willing to point me in the right direction.

I still have to inform potential employers or renters of my past offense and current status on the public registry, and often it is a deal-breaker for what would have otherwise not been questioned. I’m lucky enough that I’ve been able to get by with minimum invasion into my private life, however the past sex offense and its implications on where I can live, work or gather is something that is always hanging out in the back of my head. At the time this is being written, I’m living in Michigan with my fiancé and looking for a new job. There are some applications I fill out that ask if I’ve ever been convicted of a crime or even a sex offense specifically, and I sometimes I genuinely don’t know if it’s better to be honest or not. I’ve been going through rounds of interviews with some companies, and I dread them asking about my background, or if they’re going to find anything on my criminal record. I’ve already been denied at least one job for being honest about my criminal history, because they view it as a liability to their business. I do understand why an employer would take that stance, but it’s no less discouraging to be told that I can’t work somewhere because of a mistake I made in the distant past.

It’s not easy to be vulnerable about having a past sex offense, and while I haven’t lost any close friends or family members over it, I have certainly held myself back for fear of what others would think or do. I do realize that I caused harm to a lot of people with my past sex offense, and I wish I could take it back, but it happened and I’ve been living through it. I’m truly sorry to those I hurt, and am doing my best not to actively cause harm today. What I want people to know and see is that I was a young man who was going through personal crises, made some really bad decisions and paid dearly for them. I don’t expect to be absolved of my behavior, but I also don’t want to have to live in shame and fear over something that happened in the past. It’s taken me a long time to forgive myself for what happened, and some days I have a hard time finding the strength to carry on. I hope that public perception of people with an historic sex offense will change some day, as most of us are one time offenders who will never repeat the mistake of our past. I’m still human and I deserve to be treated like one.

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The opinions expressed within posts and comments are solely those of each author, and are not necessarily those of Women Against Registry. Women Against Registry reserves the right to edit or delete any content submitted.