Jill Levenson, Associate Professor and Sex Crimes Researcher, took on Homeless Trust's Ron Book on yesterday's editorial page and all I can say is "Ouch!" Levenson says:
"Book repeatedly waves his hand in dismissal of any empirical research suggesting that residential restrictions don't work. He misrepresents the research and their authors." And:
"Ron Book is an admirable and tireless advocate for children. But it is time to stop holding onto illusions about what we hope to be true. Continuing to steer resources toward policies that don't work promotes a false sense of security and is fiscally irresponsible. Book should work with other experts and use facts and research to advocate for sexual-abuse prevention policies that will achieve their goals. Don't children deserve that?"
18 comments:
Ron Book has always made up "facts" to suit his personal objectives.
Miami Beach and Miami have Ron Book to thank for the disgusting Camp Book. Camp Book or Camp David (Dermer) is the illegal homeless site on the well traveled and well publicized Julia Tuttle Causeway. As everyone knows the 80 squatters who reside there nightly use Biscayne Bay for their bathroom. The sexual offenders are free to use their days roaming around school grounds and public parks. Thank you Ron Book.
Ron Book is extremely bias and blames all sex offenders for his mistake for not vetting the nanny he hired.
With his money, he should have had nanny cams throughout his house, but instead, he takes his failures out on everyone else.
I am so pleased to see that someone in southern Florida is finialy looking at the facts instead of just promoting the myth and hysteria that has caused the settlement at the Juliet Tuttle Causeway. The goal is to promote child safety and these laws only put former offenders under more stress an might lead to one of them actually re-offending. These laws not only don't work, they put children more at risk.
Everyone should know that the sexual offenders and the homeless who are trespassing and squatting on the Julia Tuttle Causeway are free to roam freely during the day. They can visit their homes and they can visit neighborhood schools and they can visit parks. At night they live in tents and campers and they use Biscayne Bay as a bathroom.
Ron Book and David Dermer did not solve a problem. They just created another bigger problem. 2,500 distance requirements do not work.
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1332788.html
Link to the Book's comments.
In May, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that Megan’s Law adequately protected children from sexual predators, and that local laws went too far, effectively restricting sex offenders right out of many towns and cities, “….the State Supreme Court has determined that the townships and municipalities are not authorized to adopt such ordinances,”
ZMAN while I welcome your comments, I don't want the links...your comments here are the same as those on your links anyway.
ZMan! said...
Ron Book is blinded by his own ego, hate and rage to punish everyone who may be a sex offender. He has proven again and again that he doesn't care what EXPERTS say, because it doesn't help his pocket book and cause (to punish offenders).
Just look at all the videos on these two YouTube sites:
http://www.youtube.com/user/JuliaTuttleCauseway
http://www.youtube.com/user/SexOffenderIssues002
I am totally against ANY form of abuse to any human being. And I believe anyone who murders another human being should be in prison for the rest of their life (until they die). I do not believe in the death penalty for anyone. Also, I believe that once a person has been in and out of prison and has served their probation and parole, done everything required of them, and what was signed on the "contract" when they took the plea, none of this should be required of them, none of it. The state cannot tear up a contract like this, which they are basically doing, it's unconstitutional. Many people, if they had known they would be faced with all this, they would have NOT taken a plea deal. And the courts are very aware of this and this is why they made it retroactive; thus violating ex-post facto laws! They should be allowed to get on with their life as if nothing happened. I'm not saying for it to be removed from their record, but, the crime should be removed from public view and background checks, they should not have any more restrictions, shaming, etc. If they commit another crime, then they face a lot more punishment, like everything else is treated.
When an ex-offender is forced to move from his/her home, thus having to sell it, cannot find another home within the law due to the residency "buffer" zones, get fired from their jobs due to being on the registry, cannot find a new job due to being on the registry, their husband/wife lose their jobs due to a significant other being on the registry, their children lose their friends and are harassed and bullied in school due to a family member being on the registry, thus destroying the children's lives, ex-offenders are forced into homelessness and to live under bridges, harassed by police, neighbors and probation/parole officers, have to wear "I'm a sex offender T-shirt" or have a neon green license plate on ALL their cars, have "sex offender" on their drivers license and forced to renew their licenses every year, forced from shelters during tornadoes or hurricanes, cannot give blood at some places due to being discriminated against for being on the sex offender registry, denied housing due to being on the registry, signs placed in their yards inviting harassment and ridicule from the neighbors, forced to move when the neighbors start picketing outside the ex-offenders home, the list is endless.
I THINK THIS IS CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT, BEYOND THE EXTREME!
These people that are putting links on OUR BLOG are increasingly making me uncomfortable. I do not have time to check on the links...so I am requesting no more links as this is a volatile subject and I do not wish to misinform readers. I took the links out of this post as well:
Anonymous said...
Ron Book is just another person using a tragedy for personal profit, not unlike Mark Lunsford or John Walsh. Ron Book makes millions yet, as head of the homeless trust, he does little to help those he's entrusted to help.
WOW.
Your readers are so blinded by their misplaced dislike of Book that they fail to realize that it is the State's Department of Corrections leading these sex offenders to live under the bridge! This is easier and cheaper than caring about Miami Dade County from way on up there in Tallahassee... way easier than working to find adequate and appropriately placed housing in areas that are legally approved. (Which do exist!)
I constantly wonder why this issue is not placed right at the feet of our esteemed Governor as head of the state executive branch of government... and the Dept of Corrections (DOC).
Local governments have enacted these distance requirements and now it seems DOC is not following the laws.
This is absurd! By default, your readers are defending sexual predators who have defiled children. CHILDREN! And lets be real... don't believe that song and dance about gee I was 18 and she was 16... that is BS.
Here's a new idea: Look to providing an outlet to review and solve this issue and stop trying to blame someone.
"...The sexual offenders are free to use their days roaming around school grounds and public parks. Thank you Ron Book."
This is why Mr. Book is working so hard to CHANGE the laws he initially thought would HELP. He has directly enlisted the assistance of his daughter in this area. They are working tirelessly to FIX the problems. No solution is perfect, certainly not the first time around, but at least he is trying. And he welcomes all input. Call or email him with a helpful suggestion.
And if you think Ron does this stuff for money, you are sadly mistaken. He has all he will ever need.
What he cares about is the community, his family and others (those he doesn't even know) and wants to protect them.
He now realizes the errors in his aggressive stance on the zoning and is working on changing things.
Why don't you all step up and HELP rather than criticize.
Aaron from Weston
Hey Aaron. I have a bridge I want to sell you. The JTC.. Cheap!
TO WOW
Doc and Tallahassee did not create these iineffective rules MiamiDade with pressure from BOOK and his many dollars did, His common sense rule has proven to be nonsense now, and data proves that. he has told this lie for so long he believes it, and has others fooled as well, or has them on his payroll or otherwise controls them with his connections and power. Residency retrictions do NOTHING but harm. Wake up john q public and smell the coffee we are wasting millions on these ineffective laws and butting our communities more at risk with these FEEL GOOD LAWS.
Criminal justice dollars must be spent effectively for the best in community saftey and the qualified experts in the field of sex offender management need to be listened for that continued saftey
You're exactly right Aaron. All these folks who just don't like Ron Book are forgetting that the problem he is working to solve is a problem for all of us.
These folks under the bridge were convicted of sexually molesting a CHILD. Ron Book is trying to keep them away from your kids. Not a good reason to bash him. But this community is SO lazy, too lazy to learn an issue and try to fix it. The Herald is too lazy to help teach the community about real issues. Just bashers. Bashers to sell papers breeding a community of undereducated gossip hounds. That's it.... Oh no? you disagree? Then help solve the problem.
It is a good reason to bash Book when he let's his own experience color his judgment. All the men under the bridge are not sexual predators. Calling them Animals, as Book did (see earlier post) is not a word that should be used by someone who is heading up the problem-solving. Book should step aside from this issue...it hits too close to home for him to be objective. Putting aside his God-like opinion of himself, he cannot fix the world -- as he is figuring out with this issue, all he succeeded in doing was gum it up.
Geniusodespair, Please allow this one link as it is important to everyone's understanding that all these laws are based on the lie that recidivism for sex offenders is high. Without that lie, there would not be this national hysteria.
Thanks
Watch Systems, LLC claims "50% of Sex offenders re-offend," Obviously that is correct, right? http://tinyurl.com/ykvpato
"Bombshell, if 50% of those registrants are re-offending, then the total number of registered offenders should have grown by leaps and bounds. 600,000 plus half-again is 900,000, then 900,000 plus half-again is 1,350,000 plus half-again to 2,025,000 and that only if half-again recidivate ONCE in a year."
These are the SAME offenders...they do not RE-register. They are not added to the list again.
It is a fact that not only do they re-offend, but their heinous acts escalate each time.
They do not fear anything but not fulfilling their obsessions.
Thank You Jill Levenson! Finally someone with some "gravitas" comes out and says the same thing I have been saying for several years. I imagine her tongue was so sore from biting it for so long that she just simply had to speak up. It must be very frustrating with her education, experience, and the huge amount of professional research she has done and published, to be ignored by our legislators and our media, all the while Ron Book has his obsessive "opinions" touted as the gospel.
How frustrating it is to hear parents cry about their fears for their children’s safety, the politicians cry for new legislation, all the while turning a blind eye to where the danger to their children really is and not be told how to recognize it while our legislators pass laws and ordinances that cause more danger rather than prevent it.
Ron Book throws his power and wealth around like he is God's gift to Florida and the politicians pant after that power and money like hungry dogs. It is obscene. This happens while what is best for the safety for our children is ignored. In my opinion, Ron Book is a narcissist who is so incensed that someone would hurt or take something from someone that was "his" that it has become an obsession. He did all he could to punish the person who actually harmed his child in an horrible way, so now he must continue his quest for revenge on every other person with the designation of registered sex offender, no matter what the offense or the actual effectiveness of the action. He is blinded to the truth by his hatred and our children suffer for it.
Oh and something more to think about... if Ron Book's obsessive vendetta against all former sex offenders were truly motivated by his daughters nightmare experience, and his motives were purely for the safety of the children, it seems to me that he would have handled the situation very differently.
His daughter was sexually and emotionally molested by the nanny for several years. His daughter’s behavior had changed and deteriorated so badly that the Book's had her in therapy. Now, I read that this nanny was also abusive to Mrs. Book, but I have not heard that from a reliable source so I don't know if it is true or not. My point is, if you are a rich and powerful man of greater than average intelligence and you find out that the nanny you hired had been abusing your daughter, the first thing you do is to make sure she is punished to the fullest extent of the law, which he did. Then, after seeing to your daughters mental health, you would want to educate the public on all the warning signs that were there from his daughter that he did not recognize for years. You would want the public to know that 90% of child molestations are committed by family or close associations and that there are warning signs from the offender and the victim. You would do anything in your power and with your money to let the public know this. Instead he chooses to ignore these facts, no, not just ignore them but to work hard to focus the public's attention in the direction of only those who are registered sex offenders and have the least percentage of chance to re offend. This sounds like revenge to me, not a desire to protect children. Watching out for registered sex offenders would not have changed the circumstances for his daughter, but knowing the warning signs would have. I do not in any way blame Mr. Book for what happened to his daughter. The only person responsible is the nanny. But isn't it more important to look at where the 90% of new molestations are coming from and how to PREVENT those than focus on revenge?
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