Barely a Teenager and Marked for Life

Federal law requiring juvenile sex offenders to register as predators for life does more harm than good

Under federal law, a 14-year-old boy who has sexual relations with a 13-year-old girl could be branded for life

In 1999, Anthony, a 13-year-old boy who weighed 350 pounds, told his four-year-old cousin to expose herself. Anthony, now 24, swears he did not touch her. Nonetheless, her father pressed charges and Anthony was found delinquent for assault with intent to commit sexual abuse, sentenced to sex offender treatment, and assigned a lifetime spot on Iowa’s public sex offender registry.

Ten years after beginning treatment at Woodward Academy in Woodward, Iowa, Anthony, who asked that his last name not be published, finds it impossible to lead a normal life. Permanently associated with dangerous pedophiles and pathological rapists, his childhood mistake has hindered his ability to find work, housing and societal acceptance. Although he left Woodward when he was 18, Iowa’s residency restriction at that time—which barred sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school—forced him to leave his family’s home in Des Moines for a trailer with no electricity on land owned by his father in rural Osceola, Iowa.

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