The Nemesis Of Justice

Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Virginia.

There is a new law in Virginia; it's part of the changes the state is making to sex offender laws. The goal is to have tougher punishments and better monitoring of the offenders once they're released.

This particular law, which takes effect July 1st, requires public and private colleges to send the state police the names, social security numbers and birth dates for all the students they accept.

The bill passed unanimously and Republican state Senator Kenneth Stolle, the bill's chief Senate sponsor, said the legislation was an important part of the effort to prevent sex abuse.

"We would be housing some of these sex offenders in an area that is close to other students," he said. "The only way we could ensure that this information was verified was to feed the information to the state police."

"I've got two kids in college right now," said Stolle, "You're going to have a . . . hard time explaining to me why my daughter is living next door to a sexual offender. My guess is every parent out there would have the same expectation that I do."

Schools will send the information electronically to police, who will check it against the state and national sex offender registries, said Col. W. Steven Flaherty, superintendent of the state police.

If a prospective student is a registered sex offender and enrolls in the school, police will check to see if the offender fills out a change of address form within the required 72 hours. If the offender does not, police will investigate.

The school also is notified that a sex offender is among the students who enroll.

Personal information of those who are not registered sex offenders will be destroyed. "Essentially, this information comes to us. We bounce it against the sex offender registry. If we don't get a hit, we don't keep the information," Flaherty said.

Polly Franks, a Virginia advocate for victims of sex crimes, said the risk of harm from offenders trumps privacy concerns. Two of Franks' young relatives were sexually assaulted by a neighbor who, unbeknownst to Franks, had been convicted of sex crimes in Texas.

And now, the rest of the story. Yes, you guessed it, the ACLU has issues. What were the odds?

"This law may not technically violate federal law, but it certainly violates the spirit of federal law intended to maintain student privacy rights," said Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Virginia.

For the ACLU to even broach the subject of the spirit of the law is the height of hypocrisy. This group has raped and defiled justice herself in order to protect the guilty at the expense of the innocent. That is a violation of justice without equal. If anything, the ACLU is the nemesis of justice.

As Senator Stolle puts it, "You can't stop protecting people because you're afraid that efforts . . . are going to be abused." It seems, senator, you can and you will if you're a card carrying member of the ACLU.

Thanks to the Washington Post and Chron.com.

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