Child kidnapper fights sex offender label

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http://www.nyjournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070515/NEWS02/705150332


By BILL HUGHES
THE JOURNAL NEWS


(Original publication: May 15, 2007)
Jack Moore admits that he kidnapped a 2-year-old girl during a botched home invasion 32 years ago in New Rochelle.
The 53-year-old North Carolina resident, who served 20 years for the crime, said as much at a March court hearing in White Plains.
What he can't understand is why New York state wants to label him for life as the most dangerous type of sex offender for the crime, which he maintains was simply a kidnapping for money.
"There was no sexual component to this crime. There was never any suggestion that there was a sexual component to this crime," said Jeanne Mettler, one of Moore's court-appointed lawyers who is fighting to get his Level 3 sex offender designation rescinded.
Under the state's Sex Offender Registration Act, anyone convicted of kidnapping a minor who is not his own child must register as a sex offender regardless of the circumstances.

click to read the rest.

Should'nt this guy be grateful he is out at all ? :confused:
 
ok what i got from this article was that law makers added child kidnappers to the list for 2 reasons. 1) the fact you did not sexual assault the child could just be luck because we caught you so quick. 2) it is the best way to notify the schools and public that some1 capable of stealing your child is in your area.

i personal think he should have a choice. put your name on the list or stay til the end of his sentence. he was given 20 to life. if he wants to stay in jail til he is dead he should not have to register imo.
 
I understand the argument, of course, but really???

It does make you think, though... I'm much more concerned about tracking people who commit crimes against children in any form (i.e. abuse, murder, and sex assault) than I am about tracking those who commit crimes against adults (even rape...)

And what's his main problem? That he can't get a job at a school? GOOD!!! That if he's asked in an interview about his registration he has to explain "Oh, I didn't have sex w/ a child, I just tried to rob her home and then took a 2 year old... not as big of a deal, really..." !!!!!

He needs to crawl back under his rock.
 
And what's his main problem? That he can't get a job at a school?

I doubt that. It's probably because of harassment issues. While I have little sympathy towards kidnappers-for-money I have even less sympathy for child abusers/molesters even when they are the victim's parents. I can see why this man wouldn't want to be labeled as the latter. In a way it's like making someone pay for someone else's crimes. As far as I know this guy has neither molested nor harmed the child physically and he has done his (deserved) time for the kidnapping. He has never been charged with nor convicted of a sex crime so logically, he shouldn't be labeled as a sex offender, which is certainly worse than being a 'simple' ex-con, which he is. The sex offender registry shouldn't be used for other purposes than that of keeping track of a category of criminals (sex offenders) who are prone to re-offend and therefore constitute a specific threat the community needs to be aware of. Other than those, marginalizing other categories of criminals who have paid their debt to society will hamper their rehabilitation and could pressure them into reverting to a criminal lifestyle therefore creating a new threat rather than neutralizing one. The way things go I wouldn't be overly surprised if someday unpaid parking tickets will be all it takes to label one as a potential sex offender and add his/her name to the list 'just in case'.
 
with out him on the registry there is no way to stop him from working in a school. driving your kids on a bus. living next to a school. we have to protect a kid right to be safe over a kidnappers right to pick how he is labeled.
 
I doubt that. It's probably because of harassment issues. While I have little sympathy towards kidnappers-for-money I have even less sympathy for child abusers/molesters even when they are the victim's parents. I can see why this man wouldn't want to be labeled as the latter. In a way it's like making someone pay for someone else's crimes.

Nah, this guy preys on kids. If you're willing to kidnap a child, you're one step away from killing the child.

Too bad that he doesn't want to be lumped in as a pervert. I want him on the registry as someone that victimizes children, whether sexually or not.
 
We can rename it, as far as I'm concerned. Call it "Sick Exploitative Freaks who Target Kids Registry".

I would be disagreeing if a state was trying to be too broad with the registry so that it would lose its ability to scare people and be a big punishment. But that's not the case here.
 
with out him on the registry there is no way to stop him from working in a school.

I wouldn't send my kids to a school that hires ex-cons but fortunately I do not know of any school that would do that.
 
We can rename it, as far as I'm concerned. Call it "Sick Exploitative Freaks who Target Kids Registry".

I would be disagreeing if a state was trying to be too broad with the registry so that it would lose its ability to scare people and be a big punishment. But that's not the case here.

It works for me too. My ex-BIL kidnapped & threatened to murder his own children to get back at my sister for leaving him. He was sentenced to 25 years for aggrivated kidnapping in TX - this translated to 12 years under the Texas prison system. Well, a case against another agg. kidnapper was thrown out & my BIL's case was reviewed. He pled & got out last September, after 7 years. TX is making him register as a level 3 as well, at least until the end of his sentence, from my understanding.

This guy kidnapped the child with the implied threat to kill the child unless he was paid to return them. He is lucky to be out at all.
 
Nah, this guy preys on kids. If you're willing to kidnap a child, you're one step away from killing the child.

Too bad that he doesn't want to be lumped in as a pervert. I want him on the registry as someone that victimizes children, whether sexually or not.

People who do time on a regular basis for beating their kids to a pulp or even murdering them don't end up on the registry either, as long as they haven't been convicted of sexual abuse. If you want to put other categories of criminals on the sex offender registry then don't call it a sex offender registry. Criminal records exist for a reason.
 
People who do time on a regular basis for beating their kids to a pulp or even murdering them don't end up on the registry either, as long as they haven't been convicted of sexual abuse. If you want to put other categories of criminals on the sex offender registry then don't call it a sex offender registry. Criminal records exist for a reason.

Actually - please see the post regarding my Brother in Law - he is on the registry in TX for agg. kidnapping of his own children. There was never any implied sexual abuse in his case. He held a gun to the head of his six year old daughter while she was on the phone with my sister, screaming that he was going to blow her F____ING brains out if she did not get her A$$ down there.
 
i thought the registry existed to keep kids safe. so that the public would know if some1 who is known to cause harm to children is in the area.
Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore declined to comment on the case, citing the continuing appeals process, but in court transcripts from the hearing Assistant District Attorney Judith Berger argued that while Moore claimed he never intended to harm the child, he also claimed he never intended to kidnap the child, which he ultimately did.
Berger also argued that the law is clear on requiring the registration of child kidnappers as a public safety interest. Schools and other types of facilities with "vulnerable populations" have a valid right to be informed that a convicted kidnapper is living, "in their midst," she said in court.

a four-judge panel with the state's Appellate Division found that the kidnapping of children by strangers is, "a frequent precursor to a sex offense," and that "the absence of a sexual element from the kidnapping may be the merely fortuitous result of the interruption of the offender's plan."
The panel also ruled that the title of a law was "of little significance," as long as the wording of the actual law was not ambiguous in its meaning.
"Whether in common parlance the defendant is a sex offender, or his offense is a sex offense, is of no legal significance where, as here, the Legislature has rationally chosen to categorize him or his offense as such," the panel ruled.
 
The problem is that this is something this idiot did when he was 21. He has been in prison for years and years.

Filling the SOR with people who are not, in fact, sex offenders only makes it harder to monitor them all and harder for police to sift through them all when a crime against a child is committed. It gives ammunition to the people who are fighting the laws to regulate SOs.

If a school is hiring ex-cons, then that is a whole separate problem. To volunteer at my kids school, I had to go through a criminal background check, including my driving record. I couldn't have a DUI, any felony, or any other misdemeanor against a child (are there such things???). Not even to help out with the Valentine's Day party or read to them in the library! And that's how it should be.
 
i thought the registry existed to keep kids safe. so that the public would know if some1 who is known to cause harm to children is in the area.

As I understand it the sex offender registry exists to keep adults safe (or at least, aware) as well, since all categories of sex offenders are on it including those who have only committed sex crimes against adults, it's not limited to a registry of convicted pedophiles. There appears to be some confusion over the purpose of the registry, some seem to be thinking that it was specifically designed to protect children from violent adults whether the violence has sexual connotations or not. While this is true in a few states it doesn't apply to most of them because only people who have been specifically convicted of sex related offenses can be added to the registry.

In its current format in many states the registry generates more confusion and false sentiment of either security or insecurity than anything else. On the registry are people who have raped kids yes, but there are also people who aren't dangerous whatsoever such as this young mother from California who ended up on the registry for having emailed a picture of her naked newborn to her own mother. Heck, my parents have naked baby pictures of me, then I guess they should be on the registry, and probably most of your folks as well, maybe even yourselves. Would this make the world safer for kids? No but it probably would make it pretty confusing, as if it wasn't already.

What I see in this thread is a desire to have a readily accessible document that would list all individuals with criminal records whose background suggest they could be a threat to children, sexually AND otherwise.

I'm all for it, as long as these registries tell the whole case narrative so that we can make up our minds regarding the level of threat represented by each and any individual on the registry's list. If I see the mention "Child *advertiser censored*" next to Mrs Kaputnick's name without any further details and that Mrs Kaputnick happens to be my daughter's 3rd grade teacher, I will organize a PTA riot and hopefully drive Mrs Kaputnick out of the education system as well as out of town if she knows what's good for her. However, if the registry states that Mrs Kaputnick was convicted of possession of a picture of her own baby in the tub I don't think I would be as vindictive, in fact I might organize a riot in front of the DA's office instead.

Is it our desire to see Mrs Kaputnick executed? I hope not. But there are sicko vigilante types out there who'd kill her on the spot given the chance. It happened in my state, some deranged teen from Canada came here with the intention of killing everyone whose name appeared on the state's sex offender list, which was only 34 at the time but still, as many targets. He managed to shoot and kill two men before police cornered him at which point he blew his brains out with his .45 pistol. Ouch.

Before you hail him as a hero take time to consider that one one of his victims was a gentle, well-liked 24-year-old guy whose name was on that list because he had slept with his girlfriend when she was 3 days shy of her 16th birthday, which is the legal age for sex in Liberal yet charmingly conservative Massachusetts which is where the event had taken place, and he was 19. Apparently a jealous rival teen who was after the same girl had ratted them out. In many states this would not have been a crime at all, this kid was no danger to children, yet he was presumed evil and unfit to live. I do not think our society can benefit from this kind of "justice". Amend the sex offender registry, include full narratives so that we know who's dangerous from those who shouldn't even be on the registry. What if your kid ends on the registry for an idiotic reason? Who's going to protect them from the self-appointed vigilantes who'll assume they must be guilty of the most despicable of crimes?

Since many of those wacko vigilantes are only after those whose names appear on the sex offender registry the least we can do is let the wacko know if one is worth going after or not and then let them go after those we couldn't care less what happens to... or secretly wish something bad comes upon. Obviously the wackos will eventually get caught but perhaps they'll have time to rid us of genuine vermin before that happens instead of blindly offing people among whom could be useful but unlucky individuals who have been maliciously prosecuted.

And then there are those people who are guilty of crimes other than sex crimes but nonetheless appear on the registry, sometimes under a fictitious charge because the crime they have committed doesn't fit the criteria for a sex crime. It is unfair to represent those individuals as bona fide sex offenders because it exposes them to reprisals from individuals that would otherwise not bother with them. I strongly believe in a justice system where convicted individuals must endure the consequences of their conduct in their social life even after they have paid their debt to society but I can't condone the misrepresentation of an individual's crime(s) that could lead to him/her being unofficially punished for crimes they haven't committed.

Apart from a sex offender registry that would contain full narratives, I would like to see is a violent offender registry distinct from the sex offender registry that would be just as available so that we can really see for ourselves who may be a threat to children, even among those criminals who normally would not qualify for the sex offender registry. In that violent offender registry I would like to see the names of those who have been convicted of any sort of physical violence against adult victims (other than sexual offenses) 3 or more times and the names of anyone who has been found guilty of violence against child victims (other than sexual) even if it occurred only once and even if the charge was related to a supposedly justified spanking. Any assault against an adult other than self-defense is illegal and so should be any assault against a child even under the guise of spanking. People who can't control their kids other than by hitting them should perhaps not have any. I would much rather have as a schoolteacher for my children a man who was once convicted of having consensual sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend when he himself was just a teen than a man who condones spanking.

The kidnapper would appear on that list and then if some wacko wants to off him for it that's his choice. One thing for sure no one on that list would be hired by schools and other such institutions.

Just my opinion of course :)
 
People who do time on a regular basis for beating their kids to a pulp or even murdering them don't end up on the registry either, as long as they haven't been convicted of sexual abuse. If you want to put other categories of criminals on the sex offender registry then don't call it a sex offender registry. Criminal records exist for a reason.

You'll see my above post recommending a new name for it. If I had to trade, I would trade rapists of adults for kidnappers and murderers (non-sexual) of children.

When you're talking about kids you need to err on the side of caution and protection vs. rights of criminals. That's why the NY law is written broadly.

The reason sex offenders are tracked in the first place is their likelihood to reoffend. Murderers are not as likely to reoffend - but then again no study could ever be conclusive in this area, as we tend to keep murderers in prison (if they murder strangers - not their wives or children - our court system usually lets them out) Sex offenders have only recently faced bigger sentences - but again - the big sentences are saved for stranger assaults.
 
your idea has merit but it would take time and money. it has not been easy to get every state to have a SOR. to get every state to have all felonies listed with all the facts behind the crime would be near impossible. i agree that more detail is needed on the list we currently have. that is something we have a shot at actually making happen.
 

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