The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #139337   Message #3195248
Posted By: Bee-dubya-ell
25-Jul-11 - 05:09 PM
Thread Name: BS: Should I Tell ?
Subject: RE: BS: Should I Tell ?
I'd talk to at least one of the kids, not because they're having sex, which is normal, but because they're doing it in public view which is more dangerous than they think. If they should be caught by the cops or reported by someone less open-minded than Dan, they would be charged with a sex crime. And, in its efforts to help prevent the threat of serious sexual crime, the criminal justice system has lumped perpetrators of all sex crimes, from forcible rape to public urination, together on sexual offender databases. One of those databases is the last place anybody wants their name to be.

Do those kids understand that, if they were to be convicted, they could never live within a certain distance of a school, or that the law would require that all their neighbors be informed of their offender status? And do they understand that those neighbors aren't going to ask why they're on the sex offender registry and give them a chance to explain about how they'd had a couple of beers and were porkin' in the side yard back when they were teenagers. Those neighbors are automatically going to think they're rapists or child molesters.

Those kids need to understand that public indecency may be a minor offense, but the consequences can hang around for life.