On his worst days, Andre Perez wishes he could do the same. As a child, he was sexually assaulted by a man in his church. As a difficult and developmentally stunted 12-year-old, he touched his 5-year-old sister's genitals with his own on a few occasions.
Mr. Perez's sister reported the molestation three years later to her Garland elementary school teacher. At 16, Mr. Perez – a sometimes runaway with major behavioral problems – was charged with aggravated sexual assault of a minor and sent to a juvenile detention facility outside of Austin.
Five years later, he had a GED and a healthy dose of optimism. But sex offender registration made his life "near impossible." No one would lease him an apartment; he spent two years bouncing between extended-stay motels and subletting rat- and roach-infested units. He lasted two semesters at Collin County Community College, until classmates found him on the sex offender registry and vandalized his car.
Employment options were no better. Business owners routinely ordered him off their property after conducting background checks. And he lost jobs at Blue Bell Ice Cream and Discount Tire when bosses and colleagues learned he was on the sex offender registry, he said. Humiliated and hopeless, Mr. Perez ignored registration requirements and fled Texas last fall for Illinois, where he moved in with relatives.
"It was the first time I ever felt like I was living a normal life," Mr. Perez, 24, said in August from behind a Plexiglas wall in a Houston detention center.
By April, he'd been caught and sent back to jail in Texas to serve several more months for a sex offender registration violation, a state jail felony.
On his worst days, Andre Perez wishes he could do the same. As a child, he was sexually assaulted by a man in his church. As a difficult and developmentally stunted 12-year-old, he touched his 5-year-old sister's genitals with his own on a few occasions.
I'd have to admit to having mixed thoughts regarding the lifetime designation of sex offenders. I think that the main distinction that I tend to draw is between acts done between kids and those done by an adult to a kid. In my mind, they're two very different situations.