“William” left Graham Correctional Center on an August day in 2008 after serving nearly six years locked up on sexual assault charges. And it wasn’t until the day of his release that he realized a different kind of confinement awaited him on the outside.
By his admission, William committed the crime he was accused of: he raped at gunpoint the woman who was his girlfriend and the mother of his child. His offense isn’t sympathetic, but among sex offenses it isn’t an anomaly. Most sex crimes are committed by people who are acquainted, sometimes intimately, with their victims.
“There are a few people at the top of the pyramid who are going to need constant watching because of the nature of their makeup,” Dougherty says. “And then further down is this wide spectrum of people who don’t need to be watched. They did a dumb thing. I’m not saying it was right, but they’re 21 and had sex with a 16-year-old, or some such thing. But when they’re treated with the same degree of concern as this small amount at the top, it makes life really difficult for them.”
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There are other restrictions, too. The laws regulating sex offenders range from broadly restrictive to quotidian. Only one paroled sex offender can live in a multiunit building. Offenders whose victims were underage can’t live within 500 feet of a school, public park, or day care center. Sex offenders are banned from using social-networking websites. Sex offenders on parole can’t dress as Santa Claus or the Easter bunny. They can’t hand out candy on Halloween. Paroled sex offenders aren’t allowed to possess prescription drugs for treating erectile dysfunction.
William, who’s 34, was born in the Robert Taylor Homes, but he spent most of his childhood in Chatham. William says his father treated his eight children harshly, and his wife worse—he says the first time he saw a gun, his father was pointing one in his mother’s face.
The incident that would send him to prison began as a domestic spat. He was on the expressway when he began to think somebody had tampered with the rims on his car—one of the wheels started to come off. He got the car towed, and called his girlfriend to come pick him up. She dropped him off, and he called her later to come pick him up again. When she returned, she double-parked in the street, William says, with two of her children in the car. William wasn’t ready, and they started fighting. She took off.
“That’s where I had this grand idea to just have my way with her, to take advantage of her sexually,” he says.
Credit: Andrea Bauer
