Guest editorial: Safety outweighs right to privacy
By State Reps. Debra Maggart and Henry Fincher • April 7, 2010


Crimes against children are despicable and evoke our strongest emotions. All decent people want to protect and help our children grow up safe and happy. Likewise, when our children make mistakes, we want them to learn a lesson and not repeat that mistake.


Juvenile crime brings desires into conflict. Violent juvenile sexual offenders are the subject of a legislative debate right now, and this issue evokes strong and passionate emotions from both sides.
Adult sexual offenders are put on a public registry and are subject to strict limitations on where they can live and how they must conduct themselves in our society. Certain violent sex offenders cannot work around schools, day care centers, parks and other public areas. These laws help protect our children from being victimized.

Right now, juvenile sex offenders are treated very differently, regardless of their crimes. Rapists, child molesters and sexual predators are not subject to public registration requirements as juveniles.

We want to fix that. Our bill puts the worst juvenile offenders on the Tennessee Sex Offender Registry.

We believe that the public has the right to know when a rapist or a sexual predator lives in their neighborhood. As parents, we do not care if a sex offender living nearby is 15 or 51; we want to know about it so we can take the appropriate precautions to protect our families.

Our bill puts the most violent juvenile sex offenders ages 14 and up on the public registry. The offender has to receive a juvenile conviction for one of the most egregious sex crimes in our laws — rape of a child, aggravated rape of a child, rape and aggravated sexual battery with a weapon. These convictions are called "adjudications" and only happen after a full trial is held before a juvenile judge who finds that the offender committed these crimes beyond a reasonable doubt, or after the offender pleads guilty.
The offenders are then evaluated by a team of child mental health experts who rate their likelihood of re-offending. If they are deemed a "high risk" of re-offending, they would go on the registry. These offenders would continue to receive treatment while in custody. More than 32 states place juveniles on a sex offender registry.


Tennessee Code Section 37-1-153 makes a juvenile's serious crimes public record. But common sense dictates that the public should have a convenient and accessible way to see them.


Some well-intentioned people claim that by posting these rapists' pictures and names on the Internet, we are stigmatizing them. Some argue that the registry does not deter crime. That is not its intent. Tennessee law states, "It is a compelling and necessary public interest that the public have information concerning persons convicted of sexual offenses to allow members of the public to adequately protect themselves and their children from these persons." Further, there is evidence that Tennesseans do just that: The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation reports that the Tennessee registry receives over 10,000 visits per day.

While these concerns are worthy of consideration in some offenders, the public's right to know where these violent predators live outweighs their right to privacy. If we can save one child from being victimized by a violent sexual predator by making the public aware and vigilant, this law will have served its purpose.

State Rep. Debra Maggart is a Republican from Hendersonville. State Rep. Henry Fincher is a Democrat from Cookeville.