XPost: alt.california, sac.politics, alt.politics.democrats.d   
   XPost: alt.politics.liberalism   
   From: sf.nancy@mail.house.gov   
      
   Colorado’s sex offenders have long maintained the state treats   
   them as pariahs, closely monitoring where they live, what they   
   look at, who they talk to and what they discuss. One claimed in   
   federal court filings that he was warned against keeping a   
   crucifix because it displayed partial nudity. Another, convicted   
   of groping a woman, said he had to write down his thoughts every   
   time he saw a school bus.   
      
   The idea was to protect children, but the resulting system that   
   cut off offenders from their own families has now been struck   
   down in federal court. That leaves Colorado to create a new sex-   
   offender treatment and management system that defense lawyers   
   say is long overdue but prosecutors worry will put children at   
   risk.   
      
   Supporters of the changes point to lives disrupted by what they   
   call an outdated and overreaching system. David Zayatz, 39, said   
   Colorado authorities threatened to separate him from his family   
   after he was arrested in Florida on a parole violation in 2015.   
   An indecent-exposure charge when he was 15 years old — for   
   “mooning some people,” Zayatz said, although an official account   
   was not available because he was a juvenile — put him on   
   Colorado’s radar as a sex offender.   
      
   Police in Florida had stopped Zayatz for a traffic offense and   
   discovered he absconded from parole in Colorado 16 years earlier   
   after serving prison time for burglary. When Zayatz was returned   
   to Colorado, he learned he was classified as an “unadjudicated   
   sex offender” because of the old exposure charge. Based on a   
   psychosexual evaluation, authorities determined Zayatz could   
   continue living with his common-law wife and daughter after he   
   reparoled back to Florida.   
      
   “I mooned someone when I was 15. How many kids do stupid stuff   
   like that every day? And here I am turning 40 years old and   
   still dealing with it,” Zayatz said.   
      
   Critics argue that Colorado has for too long treated a broad   
   cross section of parolees and probationers, whose offenses range   
   from statutory rape to armed sexual assault or pedophilia, as   
   posing the same risks to children when in reality they differ   
   greatly. Those separated from their children include a 35-year-   
   old man who sent sexually explicit e-mails to fellow college   
   students and a man who as a 15-year-old had unlawful sexual   
   contact with a 14-year-old girl.   
      
   “There has been a historical mythology that there is this one   
   thing called a sex offender, and a lot of hysteria has been   
   around a certain imagined stranger-profile predator,” said   
   Laurie Kepros, director of sexual litigation for the state   
   public defender. “The real cases are sometimes very immature   
   people doing things that are technically in violation of statute   
   but aren’t even necessarily abnormal behaviors.   
      
   “For example, if you have someone slow mentally, and they are   
   engaging with someone that’s their developmental peer but that   
   person is four years and one day younger and under the age of   
   15, if they have consensual sexual contact, they are committing   
   a lifetime felony in Colorado.”   
      
   The cases typically aren’t so black and white, however, and   
   critics worry about what can happen when dangerous offenders   
   slip through the cracks.   
      
   Jaacob Van Winkle killed a woman he was living with and her son   
   and daughter in Cañon City in 2014, and sexually assaulted her   
   other daughter. He had been convicted in 2004 in Indiana of   
   child molestation and other sex crimes involving girls as young   
   as 5 and 7.   
      
   Authorities were not monitoring Van Winkle because he did not   
   register as a sex offender when he moved to Colorado. But he is   
   the kind of individual prosecutors are most worried about as the   
   state’s sex-offender management system undergoes fundamental   
   changes.   
      
   “What used to be very reliably in place is now ever changing and   
   in day-to-day flux,” said Caryn Datz, chief trial deputy in the   
   sex assault unit of the Boulder district attorney’s office.   
   “That imposes its own challenges on any system. And we, as   
   prosecutors, see the other anecdotes. We worry about the risk.   
   We don’t want additional victims.”   
      
   Ruling drives changes   
      
   Driving much of the change is a December 2014 ruling from a   
   three-judge panel for the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the   
   Tenth Circuit, which included U.S. Supreme Court nominee Neil   
   Gorsuch.   
      
   The panel ruled that the constitutional rights of an Oklahoma   
   man being released from prison for possession of child   
   pornography were violated when a judge required him to get   
   approval from the probation department before having contact   
   with his youngest daughter.   
      
   The judge failed to make specific findings as to why restricting   
   contact with the daughter was warranted, the panel ruled. There   
   was no evidence the man had “abused or sexually molested   
   children,” and he had “had a positive relationship with four of   
   his five children,” the panel found.   
      
   Over the past year, state parole and probation rules have   
   changed to bring contact standards between sex offenders and   
   their children in line with the ruling. The Sex Offender   
   Management Board, an arm of the Colorado Department of Public   
   Safety that writes the rules for sex-offender treatment,   
   followed suit last month. The 25-member board last year relaxed   
   standards to allow treatment providers, private companies that   
   guide sex-offenders’ therapy, to treat those in contact with   
   children.   
      
   The system used to start with the premise that offenders should   
   be barred from seeing their children even when they had not been   
   victimized, until offenders prove they’re safe. Probation and   
   parole officials almost always barred contact. The new system   
   presumes sex offenders should parent their children unless a   
   judge or parole board find compelling evidence the children are   
   in danger.   
      
   When the old rules were drawn up about 20 years ago, they were   
   guided by research that warned sex offenders often have many   
   undisclosed victims and frequently cross age and gender lines. A   
   2003 study in Colorado found that the average number of victims   
   admitted by offenders increased from two to 110 after a second   
   polygraph. Defense lawyers point out the research was conducted   
   just on hard-core offenders, and that results were skewed by one   
   who reported 400 assaults.   
      
   But consultants who reviewed Colorado’s sex-offender treatment   
   program for the state in 2013 found that participants reported   
   they felt compelled to “fabricate problems or conspire with   
   others to fake problems to fulfill program requirements.”   
      
   Re-offending is far more nuanced, according to a follow-up   
   report for the state in 2014 from Central Coast Clinical and   
   Forensic Psychology Services.The consultants reported that low-   
   risk sex offenders have less than a 2 percent chance of being re-   
   arrested within five years for another sex offense, a rate lower   
   than those being released from prison with no sex-related   
   conviction.   
      
      
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