Original Article
04/12/2012
By RLitchfield1
This is the fourteenth article in a series of articles written to promote the April 14th, 2012, charity showing of local film maker and Placer High School Graduate Ryan Frew’s documentary film about the homeless in Auburn, called, “
Life is Mandatory.” The film will be shown at the State Theater in Auburn. The funds raised will be used to assist Auburn Area Homeless People. Written by local attorney, author, and Instructor at Sierra College, Bob Litchfield.
There will be no photographs of the two men I interviewed to write this article.
Nor will I publish their real names.
I made this decision to protect these homeless men, as they walk around Auburn.
We’ll call one of them Jack, and the other one Ernie.
Jack is a tall, Caucasian male, a bit on the pudgy side, wearing glasses, and looking a lot like your average businessman. He walks with a cane, because of a bad knee. His clothing is clean, and his personal appearance is much neater than that of most other homeless men I have met.
His friend, Ernie, is also very clean. Ernie is a fairly short, stocky black man. He is a good speaker. He also walks with a cane.
I was searching for homeless women or families to interview when I ran into Jack and Ernie. They heard that I was interviewing homeless people, and they sought me out. They are hoping that someone will advocate for their unique, and dire situation.
Jack and Ernie both wear ankle monitors. Both of them have recently been released from prison, and both are registered sex offenders... what they call “
290 offenders.”
They are both homeless because our laws made them that way.
Both men were dumped here in Placer County on parole, after they got out of prison for sex offenses.
Neither one of them have any family or friends here.
They have no prospects of employment here.
Nor is there any shelter of any kind in this area that will take them in.
Even the local Christian Program, The Gathering Inn, will not take them, because they are registered sex offenders.
But the conditions of Jack’s and Ernie’s parole require that they both stay here in the Auburn area for the next three to four years.
During all of that time, both men must wear an ankle monitor, which must be plugged in and recharged every day.
But these men do not have any home, any shelter, or even any place where they can go to plug in their ankle monitors to re-charge them.
Ernie says that
this places the men in a position where they are forced by the justice system of break the law again, because one of the only ways that they can get their ankle monitors re-charged is to sneak into some commercial establishment and plug in, thereby committing the crime of stealing electricity (potentially a commercial burglary).
Jack is a tile setter by trade, and is originally from Arizona. He was here in Auburn when he committed his offense. But he would like to go back to Arizona, to be near his family. But the prison system dumped him here to serve his four years of parole. There is a program where the States of California and Arizona can swap former prisoners on parole, but Jack wasn’t even told where he was going to be paroled until he was freed.
Ernie used to work as a Chef at a restaurant in the Grand Canyon. He was in Modesto when he committed his offense. He was dumped here in Placer County to serve his parole because of a new law that requires sex offenders to be paroled a certain distance away from their victims.
I should point out that not everyone you might encounter in the Auburn area who is wearing an ankle monitor is a sex offender or a movie star. The justice system now uses ankle bracelets to monitor a lot of different kinds of offenders, because it is cheaper than feeding them in jail.
Jack and Ernie will have to wear their ankle bracelets all day, every day, for the next three or four years. It is possible to shower with the ankle monitor on, but the device cannot be submerged. Which means that for the next four years, neither one of these two men will ever be able to go for a swim, or to get into a bath.
Both men are on pain medications, which they are able to get from county health, and both are also on psychiatric medications.
The fact that they were homeless men adrift in Auburn, and that they are on psychiatric medications worried me a great deal, at first. Because I have been told by other local experts on homelessness that the homeless people in the Auburn area who are on psychiatric medications are only able to get examined and get their psychiatric medications adjusted once every six months.
But the medication situation for homeless sex offenders is not quite that perilous.
One of the men tells me that his psychiatric medication is for depression. He also tells me that they do not get their psychiatric medications through county health, but rather, through their parole officers and the parole system. Through the parole system, they are able to get their medications checked once every two months.
Jack was in prison for twelve years. Ernie was in prison for a little over five years.
Jack has been here in Auburn, homeless, for about two months. Ernie has been here, homeless, for about a year now.
Jack described his arrival in Auburn, and their current situation. “
I arrived in Auburn, and by the time that they processed me out of the jail, it was about 3:00 P.M. They put on my ankle monitor and told me that it had to be recharged every day. They gave me $200, and told me to go to the County Welcome Center, which is one of the only places in Auburn where there are services available for homeless people."
“
But the Welcome Center closes at 4:00 P.M. So, I got there just barely in time to find out anything. I didn’t know where I could go to get shelter, where I could go to get food. I didn’t even know where I could go to re-charge my ankle bracelet."
“
I was at least able to get a sleeping bag. And someone told me about a relatively safe spot where I could sleep outside for the night. So, I slept outside that first night."
“
The next day, I ran into Ernie, and he showed me some of the ropes with regard to how to survive on the streets as a homeless registered sex offender.”
Jack and Ernie usually do not camp anywhere near the other homeless men, because neither one of them do drugs or alcohol, and they do not want to be near the problems caused by drugs and alcohol. But they do have to camp outside every day, because
there is no shelter, anywhere in Placer County, that will take in a registered sex offender.
Nor is there any campground, nor any piece of ground, anywhere in the Auburn area, where it is permissible for homeless people to camp. So, homeless people are forced to sneak around and camp at any remote location where they can get away with it, until the police come and roust them out of that spot, and they move somewhere else.
Ankle monitors or not, this wandering camping life does not strike me as a very good way to monitor registered sex offenders.
Jack says that he is disabled, because of his knee and back injuries. But he is not receiving disability. He is in the process of making application for disability. But in the mean time, he has no income at all.
Ernie has peripheral artery disease in his right leg, and has had two stints put in. He applied for disability, but his claim was rejected. Right now, he is attempting to appeal his disability claim. Until then, he is homeless and without income. He sleeps outside, on the ground, every night, in a tent, with two stints in his leg.
I ask Jack what message he would like to send to the world.
Jack says, “
Get to know a person before you judge them for their past, because people do change.” Earlier, Jack had assured me that he was not the same person as the man who went to prison twelve years earlier.
I want to believe him. But I have heard all of the same news stories, television stories, and propaganda that you have heard, to the effect that sex offenders, particularly sexual predators, never really change, and that they will be repeat offenders for life.
I ask Jack what his response is to that general belief.
Jack tells me that those sex offenders whom you see walking free on the streets are very unlikely to be repeat offenders.
He says that before he was released, he had to be examined and pass written reports made by four different psychiatrists.
He says that sex offenders who cannot pass that kind of rigorous testing simply no longer get released. He says that this is especially true after the
Garrido case.
Who can say for sure how accurate that information is?
Certainly not me.
But I do know that
the registered sex offender list has been grossly abused by our justice system, and that there are men on the registered sex offender list who have nothing whatsoever to do with being sexual predators, and that those men’s lives are ruined.
Should a twenty-year-old boy who slept with his seventeen-year-old girlfriend be registered on the same list with rapists and child molesters?
Should the youth pastor of a church who gets seduced by a troubled seventeen-year-old girl be registered on the same list with rapists and child molesters?
Should a father who takes a troubled sixteen-year-old foster child into his home, and ends up being seduced by her be on the same list with rapists and child molesters?
Maybe you think so. There is certainly a wide berth for disagreement on these kinds of emotional hot-button issues.
I have been told that a man can end up being placed on the registered sex offender list for just for stopping by the side of the road to urinate, and thereby exposing himself.
If we are going to make registered sex offenders out of every person who has ever committed some form of sexual indiscretion, and put ankle bracelets on them all, then let’s start with one of our past foothills district attorneys, or two or three of our local judges, or maybe the state legislators who used to sit with lobbyists at the bar in downtown Sacramento where the legislators were encouraged to pick out the prostitutes they liked from those swimming nude in the glass-walled swimming pool behind the bar... services happily paid for by the lobbyists.
Legislators aside, I have known many a good man and good woman during my lifetime who had his or her life ruined by a moment of sexual indiscretion. But we did not register all of them as sex offenders.
Back when we were kids in school, we were taught how barbaric it was that our
Puritan ancestors would force an adulteress to wear a large scarlet letter “
A” on her clothing.
We were also taught, and saw in our annual viewing of the movie about Moses, that it was barbaric to create a class of people who were outcasts from society because they were afflicted with leprosy.
We were taught that it was barbaric, and totally un-American for people in India to separate themselves into a caste system that included one class of people who were called the “
untouchables.”
But now, when vengeance and punishment and sex is involved, Americans don’t seem to have any problem at all with creating a group of Americans whom we shall call “
registered sex offenders,” and who shall be treated as outcasts, lepers, untouchables, and who shall wear the scarlet letter of the ankle monitor, and whose names shall be posted on the internet.
Do I exaggerate about these people being outcasts and untouchables?
Jack and Ernie tell me that there is not one single shelter in Placer County that will take them in, even for one night.
And remember that they are not permitted to leave Placer County.
They do not have a place to plug in their ankle monitors, which must be recharged every day.
Even if Jack and Ernie did have any money, which they do not, there is only one place that they know of, in all of Placer County, that is even willing to rent a room to them.
The cost of renting a room at that one place is $500 per person per month.
If Jack or Ernie ever do succeed in getting disability payments, those payments will be about $900 a month. So, more than half of their income would go to rent a room at the one place in Placer County that is willing to rent them a room.
In the mean time, they sleep in a tent... even on a cold day when the rain is pouring down in buckets, like it is today.
Last night, as I lay in my warm, dry bed, the rain beat down on the roof of my home like a constant drumming. I could not sleep. I laid there, thinking about the fact that Jack and Ernie were out there, somewhere, trying to sleep in a soggy tent.
There was no room at the Inn for them. There was not even an Inn available that would accept them.
We created this situation, with our own, well-intentioned laws.
But if we were to leave our dogs, our horses, or even our livestock out in weather like this with no shelter whatsoever, someone from the humane society or animal control would probably have us arrested.
We treat our dogs and our livestock better than we treat these human beings whom we have labeled as “
registered sex offenders.”
Maybe, like me, you are one of those vindictive people who are thinking, or who have thought at some time or other in the past, “
Good. Let these registered sex offenders suffer. Let’s punish them even more. They are not human beings like us. They are animals.”
Well, fine.
You can explain that kind of no-mercy reasoning to
Jesus, when you finally meet Him face-to-face.
But in the mean time,
I think that what we need here are a few, extraordinary Christians who have enough grace to get together and figure out some safe way that we can get Auburn’s homeless registered sex offenders some shelter from the rain.
This is a problem that is too big, and too complicated, for one person to solve by himself.
