Decatur attorney teaches teens about juvenile laws and their consequences

I'd like to learn more about this program.

http://www.decaturdaily.com/news/morgan_county/hartselle/decatur-attorney-teaches-teens-about-juvenile-laws-and-their-consequences/article_e8b3e5d0-97dc-5db3-b1dc-2426beeae3b5.html

Decatur attorney teaches teens about juvenile laws and their consequences

By Keith Clines Staff Writer

If you're interested

Patrick Caver said he would like to take his presentation about state law to schools, churches, civic groups and other interested parties. He can be reached at 256-751-5991 or patrickcaveresq@hotmail.com

Until recently, The Beacon House female juvenile group home in Jasper was having problems with some of the girls using cellphones to send nude photos of themselves and photos of themselves having sex to people outside the facility.

Joann Pickett, the home’s assistant director, said those practices may have stopped after Decatur attorney Patrick Caver spoke to the girls about state laws governing sending and receiving such photos and about how those photos could spread across the internet.

“They actually responded very well,” Pickett said last week. “The subject of cellphones comes up every day.”

Caver, who represents juveniles in Morgan County District Court, said he goes to classrooms and group homes to talk to youngsters about the legal aspects of some of the things that teens might be tempted to do.

“They teach the biology of sex,” Caver said of schools. “And they teach not to have sex. But they don’t teach what the law says about sex.”

Caver has spoken to Hartselle Junior High School civics teacher Dana Sharp’s seventh-grade classes for the past eight years about the state’s juvenile laws.

Caver uses humor to build a rapport with the students before transitioning into heavier matters such as juvenile drug and sex laws, Sharp said.

“I really don’t think that they think a lot about the consequences of these things,” she said. “I think it’s a real eye-opener for them.”

Sharp said she would like Caver to give the same presentation at a teacher workshop to help teachers recognize signs of improper behavior by students.

Caver said advancing technology has provided teenagers more avenues to get in trouble with the law. Their parents, he said, are not keeping up with the technology that their children have at their disposal and the dangers that accompany new technology.

Caver said he has found that teens sending nude photos of themselves by cellphone or receiving nude photos of someone by cellphone is a common practice. Sending, receiving or possessing those photos is a Class A felony, he said.

“That’s the same as shooting somebody,” he said.

Other aspects of juvenile sex laws that Caver said teens and some of their parents don’t understand are that a 17-year-old who has sex with a 15-year-old can be charged with second-degree rape, and that a 16-year-old who has oral sex with a 15-year-old can be charged with sodomy. Both charges are a Class B felony.

The age of consent in Alabama is 16.

“I don’t think parents know what sodomy is,” he said. “I think it’s probably the parents who don’t know the laws.”

Possibly the most critical aspect of a youth convicted of a sex crime is that person will be a registered sex offender the remainder of his or her life.

“Having to register as a sex offender affects your entire life — where you live, what you have to do, what you can’t do, where you can’t go and who you have to stay away from,” Caver said.

Pickett said counselors at The Beacon House, which is a transitional home for girls ages 12 to 18, also benefited from Caver’s presentation to the girls.

“There were several things that we didn’t know,” she said. “We had spoken to them in broad terms about these things, but Patrick was more definitive.”

Should child sex offenders receive rehabilitation in prison?

The answer should be yes, but the victim industry and the "good ole boys" in Montgomery are our biggest barriers to reform. They are far too interested in money and about harmful punishments like the Hitching Post and chain gangs to care about things that are beneficial. But they merely repeat the cycle of victimhood and violence by their actions.

This article is better than Sherri Jackson's Halloween fearmongering article on "protecting children from sex offenders," which included an interview from ReFORM-AL founder Derek Logue, which could have been more informative and insightful, but ended up being a typical fluff piece. But I digress.

http://wiat.com/2014/11/24/should-child-sex-offenders-receive-rehabilitation-in-prison/

Should child sex offenders receive rehabilitation in prison?
By Sherri Jackson
Published: November 24, 2014, 5:00 pm

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) – In early November, WIAT 42 ran an investigative report that featured collected letters from sex offenders to see what they would tell parents to protect their children from abusers. That report caused us to take a closer look at what’s going on behind bars in Alabama.

It turns out Alabama is one of a few states that does not offer treatment programs for sex offenders who are in prison.

“If they leave and they are untreated they are two to three times more likely to re-offend than if they are treated and if they are treated re-offense rates are spectacularly low,” says Dr. Barry Burkart, a psychology professor at Auburn University.

Burkhart has spent 40 years studying sexual violence in society. At first he treated victims, but then he decided to tackle the source of the crimes, the offenders themselves.

“I had this kind of epiphany where I realized I could treat all the victims for the rest of my life and not make a dent but if I could treat offenders and prevent victimization,” he said.

His epiphany led him to the Alabama Department of Corrections where he sat on the board and helped develop the only sex offender treatment program at Bullock Correctional Facility. It was a state of the art program at the time ,says Burkhart.

“We were 10 years ahead of the rest of the country, when can you say that Alabama was ahead of anything except football?” added Burkhart.

Alabama had a program that addressed treating sex offenders who had been incarcerated, but got rid of it. So why remove the program?

Burkhart says the state’s administration did not believe the program to be necessary, “It was done during the administration of Fob James…he never talked to me but what I read in the newspapers [was] he did not believe the treatment programs were necessary and, coincidentally to closing the treatment programs, he reintroduced two old style ‘rehabilitation’ methods. He reinstated the chain-gang and the hitching posts.”

That was in 1995, now in 2014, State Senator Cam Ward says he has people asking to bring those methods back, “I have people today who say we should go back to chain gangs we should go back to how Fob did it.”

Ward heads the Alabama Prison Reform Task Force. He says prison reform is a hard push, “So prison reform just the slogan itself is a hard push. But if the face of prison reform becomes how do we help child molesters…the mama and daddy of that [victim] is going to say I don’t care about that.”

He says what they care about is where the money will come from and is the legislature taking it away from victims to treat criminals.

Dr. Burkhart says, “the rehabilitation side is not coming into the discussion, maybe it should, what’s coming into the discussion when I go these task force meetings unanimously is if this is anything about helping sex offenders we are not supporting anything with that going on.”

The discussion is clear for those working on the front lines to end child sexual abuse, “we want criminal justice to do two things, provide justice to the citizens of this state, which includes safety, and also deter, prevent, preclude criminal conduct, and nobody can tell anybody in this state that prisons in Alabama do any of those. They just don’t.”

Right now youth in DYS custody do receive treatment for illegal sex crimes they commit. The governor’s office says if Alabama is to treat adult sex offenders in prison that money needs to come from the legislature.

Copyright 2014 WIAT 42 News