Child Molesters and the Church – Can the State bar them?
Thursday, October 8th, 2009In North Carolina, a convicted sex offender has filed suit to challenge a state law the bars him from being in the proximity of children. He filed the suit after he was arrested for attending church where there were children.
Many states have no exceptions in their ban against convicted child molesters being around children, and includes being in a church with children. The lawsuit , A North Carolina man, James Nichols, is challenging a state law aimed at keeping people like him away from children. The case pits the right to worship against laws that restrict where convicted sex offenders can go.
Nichols, a 31 year old man who had been convicted of taking indecent liberties with a teenage girl, and again in 2003 for attempted second-degree rape, wondered why he was being “treated this way after trying to better myself?” He said: “The law gives you no room to better yourself.”
There are 36 states that establish special zones where convicted sex offenders cannot live or visit. Many of those have no exemptions for church visits. And that will be the essential thrust of Nichols’ lawsuit.
It is a quandary for churches and society. Clearly, the question must be raised: “Isn’t it better that an offender be given help in society by a church, since the aim and goal of the church would be to make this person a good and godly influence in society?” Critics would point out that society, including those children in the churches, can’t afford to take the chance, given the propensity of sex offenders to repeat their crime. Then too, there is a constitutional dimension to the issue, to wit, the freedom to worship at a church of his choice. Of course, that freedom may have some restrictions imposed by the church itself. Indeed, some churches, as a matter of policy, do not permit the regular attendance of a child molester, where the church has a ministry with children. The issue then, is does the state have a right to regulate, to the point of barring an individual from church, someone who has been convicted of a sex crime?
The lawyer in me says the state doesn’t have that right. It runs up against the First Amendment which says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The states cannot abrogate what Congress cannot violate. The phrase “prohibiting the free exercise thereof” is pretty key to the case.
One might argue the state can and does regulate and restrict many things that have constitutional protections, such as the gun control issue, District of Columbia Et al. v. Heller, and an apparent amplification or clarification of the issue which will be made in McDonald v. Chicago, which case is now before the Court. How far the states can go in regulating a constitutional right will be addressed in this case. It should shed some light on the Nichols’ case.
Frankly, given much of the language of the Court in the past, I don’t see the state laws barring church attendance passing constitutional muster. Somehow, the thought of a state being able to kick someone out of church, or bar them from attendance, does not sit well with me, legally, or morally. The church is in the absolute best position to restore such men to some semblance of usefulness in society. I think it would be a crime to bar them from being able to obtain that restoration. The churches can and should police themselves in this matter. If a man is let into a church and he has a past conviction for a sex crime, the church has an absolute right and the authority to restrict his movements and activities within the church. Such things are being done in hundreds, if not thousands, of churches who have members with a criminal past.
