5-27-16 article by Steve Yoder:One sentence in a 1986 mass-market magazine continues to sway court cases involving sex offenders.
In the early 1980s, rehabilitation counselor Robert Longo could hardly have known that his work with convicted sex offenders would make him a minor celebrity. At the time, he was running a program at the Oregon State Hospital to treat and rehabilitate prisoners who had committed sex crimes. It was a new field, and Longo says they were using what at the time were considered innovative approaches: aversive conditioning, administration of Depo-Provera to reduce testosterone levels, and penile plethysmography to measure arousal.
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But if the Supreme Court was wrong, there are no easy remedies. Ellman thinks a raft of new lawsuits attacking the worst elements of registries could build a foundation for a case that eventually overturns the 2003 decision. “Trying to get legislatures to fix these things is almost hopeless,” he says. “But trying to get courts to fix them is less hopeless because courts have to provide a rational, reasoned explanation of their decisions.”
Today, Robert Longo runs a North Carolina practice that uses neurofeedback technology to treat, among others, kids who’ve been victims of sexual abuse. Looking back, he wonders how a sentence in a popular magazine could have been so misused. “Somewhere along the way,” he says, “something really got distorted.”
..Source.. by Steven Yoder
See also: The Supreme Court’s Sex-Offender Jurisprudence Is Based on a Lie
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