"TRUE" SEX OFFENDERS
“IF YOU DO MY SON LIKE YOU DO THOSE PREDATORS, I WILL EXPOSE EVERY CASE WHERE YOU GAVE A “TRUE” SEX OFFENDER A LENIENT SENTENCE.”
-Mark Lunsford To The Clark County Ohio Prosecutor's Office
Friday March 13, 2009
There is something about Mark Lunsford that smells more rotten than a bucket of chum that’s been sitting on a
Joshua Lunsford was charged in 2007 with two felony sex crimes involving a 14 year old female after being repeatedly warned by her parents to stay away. Joshua Lunsford was 18. He was allowed to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor with no sex offender registration.
We’ll get to how he escaped the sex offender registry and Jessica’s Law, the laws Mark Lunsford so relentlessly pushes for in a moment.
Mark doesn’t particularly care for this website much or what I have to say about his activities and his hypocrisy. I don’t blame him. I have been threatened once already by the Jessica Marie Lunsford Foundation’s attorney, Mr. Gelman on behalf of Mark.
Mark and the Jessica Marie Lunsford Foundation’s attorney don’t like me exposing Mark’s “less sympathetic” side and I can’t say I blame them. Make no mistake, Mark is a highly vindictive man and will resort to just about anything if you get in his way or make known certain truth’s about him that might jeopardize contributions to his foundation - the one named after his daughter Jessica. After all, Mark has a new lifestyle to maintain. I have personally felt his and his brat pack of wolves “below the radar” wrath firsthand.
What happened to Jessica Lunsford was absolutely horrible, brutal, and heinous. No one could or would argue that and NO parent should have to live through such a tragedy. Jessica was a beautiful young girl with a smile that must have lit up every room she walked into and for that I do feel sorry for Mark Lunsford. But my sympathy and respect for him stops there.
I have watched as Mark has gone from a grieving father to a pseudo “celebrity” status. Through his daughter Jessica’s foundation, Mark rakes in enough money for him to have quit his job as a dirt truck driver and travel around the countryside, partying it up and riding an $80,000.00 custom built Harley Davidson Motorcycle. The motorcycle which was donated to his daughter’s Foundation was supposed to be auctioned off for charity, instead Mark liked it so much he kept it for himself.
Mark is also a member of the Survivng Parents Coalition.
There are certain things the public has the right to know, especially if it involves a non-profit charitable foundation that collects donations from well intentioned citizens trying to make what they think is a difference regarding issues and/or causes they care about. People have the right to know where there money is going and how it is being spent.
Recently, Mark gave testimony at a Congressional Hearing on SORNA and the Adam Walsh Act. This happened on
I watched and I listened.
There was discussion about consensual acts/crimes and whether or not those convicted of such crimes should be required to register, you know, the people just like Mark’s son Joshua.
All across the board came a resounding “NO” that those types of offenses should NOT require a person to register - they aren’t the dangerous, predatory, violent types that parents, children and the public need fear. In other words, these weren’t the people lawmakers had in mind when crafting these laws.
There was talk of people who were in fact on the registry, tragically and needlessly placed on it, sometimes for life, for exactly those types of offenses, their lives forever destroyed, many of them children, teens, and even young adults... just like Joshua.
Mark Lunsford made crystal clear and stated on the record that he felt that it was OKAY if some people were put on the sex offender registry, even if they didn’t belong there, that it was a “small sacrifice” to make …”IF it saves just one child.”
Save his own son. Save himself.
It is OKAY with Mark to throw other people’s children under the bus, completely destroying so many once promising young lives, just not HIS child.
And he made damn sure that it didn’t happen to his son, even after he violated his probation sentence and had a restraining order placed against him.
How?
The same way other people get “justice”. With connections, power, money, and threats, or a combination thereof. Just ask Mark Foley, the disgraced former Senator that was (ironically) so instrumental in the passage of the Adam Walsh Act itself.
Mark was candid with those in attendance after the hearing ended. He freely told how he was able to keep his son off the sex offender registry even though, by law, he should be on it.
Mark contacted the Ohio Prosecutor’s Office and advised them that he would “expose every sex offense case where they gave a lenient sentence to a true sex offender if they treated his son like one of those predators.”
And so, his son avoided registration, his conviction is also no longer available for viewing on the Clark Co. Ohio website which I do find very troubling.
Let's be clear though, Joshua's sex crimes were consensual in nature and no young man or woman should be registering for situations such as these, and it could be argued that no person should be registered for any consensual/non-forcible offense that is not indicative of coercive or predatory behavior toward teens.The hypocrisy of it all.
Clearly, Mark knows there is a difference between “TRUE” sex offenders (Mark’s own words) and people like his son Joshua. Still, he pushes for these laws without giving those in situations like his own son a voice. To me this is unconscionable. I honestly don’t know how the man sleeps at night knowing, KNOWING, that he has helped and is helping to destroy many young lives just like his son Joshua’s and make their lives a living hell.
Whether he realizes it or not, Mr.Lunsford has hurt far more children and families than he has helped. I cannot believe that he does not realize this. If he really cared about protecting children he would listen to what Detective Robert Schilling has to say, and focus our limited resources and taxpayer money on those [sic] “ TRUE” dangerous and predatory offenders. Offenders like the man that killed Jessica - John Couey. A man a world apart from his son Joshua and others like him.
Joshua Lunsford is no different or any more special than any of the thousands of kids, teens, and young adults who made the same mistakes Joshua did. The only difference is that their parents lacked power, connections and money. They aren’t any more or less guilty than Joshua Lunsford is.Because consensual acts ARE in fact registerable offenses, the Sex Offender Registry is and continues to be hopelessly watered down, filled with consensual sex “criminals”.
Save Mark’s son.
THIS is the reason that the dangerous ones, the John Couey’s of the world, slip through the cracks. That might be good enough for Mark Lunsford, but it’s not good enough for me.Mr. Lunsford if you read this, I implore you to take a long look in the mirror and not follow the same path as John Walsh - blindly seeking vengeance through your “tears of rage”, mowing over the innocent and telling yourself that it is OKAY if it saves just ONE child. It’s NOT okay, and it won’t SAVE ANY children.
Open your mouth and your heart and do what you know is right, what no one else has the balls to do or say, do what is NEEDED to make that difference you so desperately seek, the change that has the best chance of saving just ONE child. Have the grace to give those convicted of consensual acts what you gave your son, a second chance.
Note: Calls to the Ohio Prosecutors Office were not immediately returned.
Check back for updates on future Congressional AWA Hearings!
TAGS: Jessica's Law, Megan's Law, Mark Lunsford, Survivng Parents Coalition
