Lawyers for Columbia County sex offender try to stop eviction

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Lawyers for Columbia County sex offender try to stop eviction

Story Published: Nov 21, 2008 at 10:38 AM EST

Story Updated: Nov 21, 2008 at 12:30 PM EST

ATLANTA (AP) - Critics of Georgia's crackdown on sex offenders are trying to block the eviction of a 29-year-old woman who is the face of a lawsuit challenging the tough new restrictions.

Lawyers for Wendy Whitaker filed a motion in Columbia County Superior Court Friday urging a judge to block an eviction scheduled for next week.

The new rules, approved in 2006, ban sex offenders from living, working or loitering within 1,000 feet of just about anywhere children gather. That includes schools, parks, gyms, swimming pools and the state's 150,000 school bus stops.

Whitaker is on the sex-offender registry for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old classmate when she was 17.

A federal judge refused a request to block the eviction at a hearing last week, agreeing with prosecutors who said there are other places she can live in the county.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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Friday, Nov 21 at 12:40 PM Dallas wrote ...

This is a perfect example of how our society is so mucked up. How is it that someone can have consentual relations with someone 12 years ago, hurt no one, and still be penalized by society? Yet take this same lady, let her kill someone, and after she's paid her debt to society, she can live as she pleases, any where she pleases. The judge is wrong, the laws need to be revamped, and penalities need to fit the crime.

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