April 3

Events

• Current events

1996 - Human rights or restrictions? - Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy gave an address to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on this date. He said, "The exploitation of children for money and other considerations is among the most disturbing of all abuses involving children". Minister Axworthy added, speaking of legislation his government introduced later that month, "This is one of the strongest signals we can send internationally about Canada's intolerance of such practices". The legislation included a mandatory minimum sentence of five years' imprisonment for persons found guilty of profiting from juvenile prostitution, measures to facilitate the arrest of persons seeking the sexual services of minors, and measures to make it easier for young people to testify against their pimps.

2001 - All's unfair in the war on sex - On this date the Senate in the state of Maryland passed a bill unanimously that would require all sex offenders to be retroactively added to the state's sex offender registry. The state House of Representatives passed the bill unanimously two weeks earlier. In general, it is unheard of for a law to be passed that retroactively punishes people, but in the case of sex offenders, not one person was willing to stand up and say that maybe it was not a good idea. Similar attempts to retroactively punish sex offenders have been the focus of appeals to the Supreme Court of the United States.

2002 - Any idiot can bitch about the truth - and some get published - American Voices, a self-described "forum for conservative Americans" published an editorial on this date that the "sexualizing" of children was promoting "indifference towards child molesters." They singled out MTV, Abercrombie and Fitch, and Judith Levine's book Harmful To Minors as sources of the backsliding. The editorial also referenced the writings of Harris Mirken and Bruce Rind as sources of evil. What the article lacked, however, was any reason to doubt that the facts that these scholars all reported are true.

2015 - the now 19-year-old Raymond Frolander, who was arrested in July 2014, was sentenced to 25 Years in prison. Frolander came to public attention at age 18, when the father of his then 11-year-old homosexual lover (Jason Browning, a known violent felon, previously arrested for false imprisonment, aggravated assault with intent to commit a felony, aggravated battery with intent to harm, display of a gun or other weapon, and misdemeanor assault ) caught the two boys together and attempted to murder Frolander. He was only stopped by son's intervention and pleading. Browning was not charged for the assault or attempted murder, which he freely admitted to on a number of occasions.