Sex Crimes: What is a Sex Crime?

For better or worse sex crimes have become headline news in our area. From the Robert Blainey case to state legislators introducing new bills to protect the public - it raises the question what is a sex crime? And how can you define the different levels? To define a sex crime eyewitness news asked Oneida County District Attorney Scott Mcnamara. According to the d-a there are four different types of sex crimes. Rape, oral or anal sex, sexual abuse and aggravated sexual abuse with the use of a foreign object. All of these must be without consent to be considered unlawful. Once a person has been convicted of rape the courts will determine what level offender they are. "Once you're convicted of certain sex crimes, you have to register with the state and you become a registered sex offender. What the court does is they look at numerous factors and the factors include whether force was involved, another factor they will look at is the age of the victim, they will also look at how many sexual victims did they have, they will also look at the defendants prior criminal record." According to the District Attorney, level three sex offenders are the most likely to re-offend, therefore have the most restrictions and requirements of convicted sex offenders. "Well unfortunately statistically they are the ones that commit crimes again, we do see unfortunately some of the same people we saw at the beginning of our career, unfortunately have served time and got out and reoffended." "Sex offenders do have the highest rate of reoffending so that's why there are such restrictions as to where they can live, how often they have to report and it's obviously a concern for law enforcement across the county." Recently convicted murderer and rapist Robert Blainey is a prime example of why many officials believe sex offenders need updated photos. "Having updated photos, current photos is a really important part of what we do as far as when we start looking for people. To have someone such as a sex offender, who has a very high recidivous rate, if we're looking for them we obvious want the most recent photo we have." Late last year two state legislators introduced five pieces of legislation to help address flaws exposed after the murder of Linda Turner. "It's critical that we are updating the photographs of sex offenders every 90 days when they're visiting their parole officers what we saw from the Robert Blainey case are two dramatically looking pictures and updating their photographs every 90 days will help them get a current photo of the person they're looking for."