Often, the law is complex. A three-judge panel this week ruled that bullying by two 14-year-old Somerset County boys was serious enough to require them to register as sex offenders for the rest for their lives.
The crime? The two boys sat on the faces of 11-year-old and 12-year-old schoolmates, with bare buttocks.
One boy was convicted of criminal sexual contact. The other boy who was implicated pleaded guilty to the same offense and received the same penalty.
The trial court found that while the boys placed their buttocks on (or above) the victims’ faces, at least one of the boys’ penises touched the lips of a victim and might have parted the lips. Although that contact was unintended, it raises the act from horseplay and bullying to a more serious offense.
But how serious?
The question the panel grappled with was whether the boys are sex offenders and deserve an indelible punishment that could mark them for the rest of their lives. The panel, acknowledging “profound lifelong ramifications” for the boys, nonetheless said its hands were tied, because the law is the law, and Megan’s Law, when applied literally, fit.
Despite the horrid nature of an attack by stupid teens that got out of hand, we don’t believe Megan’s Law intended to punish teenage pranksters or bullies. The trial judge concluded the boys’ motive was to humiliate or degrade the victims. There was no evidence of sexual gratification.
This is not to dismiss the acts with boys-will-be-boys absolution. The punishment, however, should fit the crime, and while we acknowledge the humiliation suffered by the victims, there is no evidence this was a sex crime.
Asked why he did it, the teen said he “thought it was funny and I was trying to get my friends to laugh.”
While the state Legislature should consider changing the law to exclude similar situations, we hope the judges, if they’d had any leeway, would have used it. We hope they weren’t, as a defense attorney charged, “simply offended by the behavior and just couldn’t get past that issue.”
Emotion and a thirst for revenge could lead us to insist that making the boys register as sex offenders is a small price to pay for the psychological damage they have done.
But the question is, are they predators and sex offenders as Megan’s Law intended to define them? The answer is no.
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