Breaches of the Sex Offenders Registration Act — Criminal Lawyer Melbourne

If you have been charged with a sex offence, a Judge or Magistrate may make an order requiring you to be registered under the Sex Offenders Registration Act. This imposes a range of onerous reporting obligations that you have to meet. Failure to meet these can lead to further charges.

Registered sex offenders may then face charges of breach of the Sex Offenders Registration Act. This often happens because they didn’t realise the large number of innocent activities registered sex offenders are obliged to report.

1. Contact with Children

Registered sex offenders must report all contact with children, whether or not this is supervised. This is not limited to physical contact but also includes oral or written communication if engaged in for the purpose of forming a personal relationship with the child. All this contact must be reported within one day. If you report the activity too late you may be charged with breach of the Sex Offenders Registration Act.

This can cause nearly ludicrous problems. For example, a registered sex offender attends a family party with his brother and sister, and his brother brings his young son. The registered sex offender contributes to dinner table conversation with all the family around. This needs to be reported.

2. Change of personal details

Registered sex offenders must report all changes of personal details. This includes changes that may not have seemed important, for example:

• • Change of email address
  • Change or development of any internet identity to be used through any app or website. For example, if you set up an Ebay account with a username, you would need to report this.
  • Details of any tattoos or permanent distinguishing marks that you have. For example, if you a new tattoo, or got laser surgery to remove an old tattoo, you would have to report this.

This is not a complete list of all the details registered sex offenders need to report; it simply illustrates the onerous nature of the reporting obligations, and how easily one of these might be overlooked. Forgetting to report any one of these small details may lead to charges of breach of the Sex Offenders Registration Act provisions.

Sex offender registration is becoming extremely tight and the police are very willing to charge people with breaching the Act’s provisions. The police expect a registered sex offender to contact his or her Case Manager any time a reportable event occurs, however small. This is often not easy as the Case Manager may be away. The phone number to ring in this circumstance is difficult to locate unless the registered sex offender has the number.

If you are having problems related to breach of sex offenders registration provisons, please don’t hesitate to contact me using the details below.