CFC OKLAHOMA

I’m Off for a Day on the Town with a “Sex Offender” (And His Mom!)

Hi Readers! I’m very psyched because tomorrow I am going to meet a young man named Ricky and his mom, Mary Duval. Ricky is a Tier 3 Predator Status Sex Offender, on the list for life. Or at least he was, for almost four years.

How he finally got off that list this year is a story of a mom’s tenacity. How he got ON it is a story of a country that has passed sex offender laws that just don’t mesh with what we need. We NEED to keep child rapists away from our kids. We HAVE laws that make our children into rapists. Case in point?

Ricky.

When Ricky was 16 he had consensual sex twice with a girl he met at a teen club. She told him she was 15. Turns out she was just 13. Long story short: Even though the girl and her parents did not want Ricky prosecuted, he was. He admitted the “crime,” and thus he ended up one of America’s nearly 1 million registered sex offenders.

I’ve written about his story, but never with the same frankness and detail as on the website he and his mom put together, Rickyslife.com .  The story is so outrageous and the mom has been so good at bringing attention to the issue of teens branded as predators for having sex with other teens, that the media have paid attention. Now the mother and son are coming to New York from Oklahoma to tape an episode of John Stossel’s show. It’ll air later in the week.

Tomorrow, though, I’m showing them the sights. (Well, showing them to Ricky and describing them to his mom, who recently went blind from Marfan Syndrome. Did that stop her? Clearly not.)

So no posts from me Tuesday. I’ll be on the town with a mom and son I can’t wait to meet. — Lenor