This Rape Victim Wants To End the Sex Offender Registry
When Meaghan Ybos was raped in 2003, it was the sort of assault you see more often in cinematic crime fiction than in reality. A stranger, wearing a ski mask, broke into her home, held a knife to her throat, and forced himself on her.
Twenty years later, Ybos is president of Women Against Registry, an organization dedicated to ending sex offender registration across the country. Ybos’ advocacy started down that unorthodox path when her rapist was finally caught, nine years after the attack. She then learned that the Memphis Police Department had neglected to test the majority of the rape kits it collected, including hers. Since then, she’s been pushing back against the myth of the rape kit “backlog,” pointing out that in much of the country it isn’t actually a backlog. The police departments simply weren’t testing thousands of kits.
In May, Reason‘s Billy Binion interviewed Ybos by phone.
Q: You are a victim of rape. So what is it that inspires you to get involved with something like Women Against Registry?
A: I think a lot of law enforcement programming is a scam, and my experience with my rape case and my rape kit definitely, I feel, had many elements of a scam. A lot of it is just political theater to get certain people elected, having no relation to safety. I consider the registry to be another facet of that. It’s not living up to what politicians and law enforcement claim about it, using victims like me as a currency.
Q: Some might say your work with Women Against Registry is exhibiting compassion for the type of person that totally upended your life. Is that how you would describe it?
A: I don’t real
Article from Reason.com
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