WAUPACA — A Waupaca County judge has ordered convicted sex offender Sam Roloff's name to be added to the state's sex offender registry — but not until nearly 100 years have passed.The legislature has decided that girls as young as fifteen are not old enough to give their consent. That's why Roloff has been convicted of three felonies.
Circuit Judge Philip Kirk said the list, which now numbers more than 18,000 people, is rendered useless when it includes people like Roloff who engaged in consensual sex with underage parties.
"It's diluted," he said this week. "It has lost the purpose for which it was designed. It should apply to people like the David Spanbauers (who molested and killed children) or priests who abuse children, but it gets applied to consensual sex because it was outside the age requirement."
I just love the excuse that Roloff's attorney gives:
Roloff's attorney, Tom Johnson, said cases like Roloff's are all too common.Roloff was twenty, not sixteen. As dumb as I was I was at twenty, even I understood that sex with someone under eighteen could ruin my life.
"The issue isn't the statute's existence, it is the indiscriminate use of the designation sexual predator," Johnson said. "There isn't any discretion. It is either on or off. You demonize them. When are we going to wake up as a society and acknowledge that teens are sexually active?"
Roloff had a choice. He could've walked out, or even notified someone responsible what the oldest girl was up to. Instead he chose to participate in a crime.
The last laugh may be on the judge. He may have temporarily thwarted the state's sex offender registry (pending appeal by the presecutor), but Google lives forever. Roloff will always be remembered on the internet as a sexual predator.
