Gynocentrism Sucks
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VIENNA, Virginia (AP) -- A show of affection almost landed a teenage boy in detention.
Hugging was 13-year-old Hal Beaulieu's crime when he sat next to his girlfriend at lunch a few months ago and put his arm around her shoulder. He was let off with a warning, but the cost of a repeat offense could be detention.
A rule against physical contact at Kilmer Middle School, about 10 miles west of Washington, is so strict that students can be sent to the principal's office for hugging, holding hands or even high-fiving.
"I think hugging is a good thing," said Hal, a seventh-grader. "I put my arm around her. It was like for 15 seconds. I didn't think it would be a big deal."
Unlike some schools, which ban fighting or inappropriate touching, Kilmer Middle School bans all touching.
But that doesn't seem necessary to Hal and his parents. They've sent a letter asking the county school board to review the rule.
But at a school of 1,100 students that was meant to accommodate 850, school officials think touching can turn into a big deal. They've seen pokes lead to fights, gang signs in the form of handshakes and girls who are uncomfortable being hugged but embarrassed to say anything.
"You get into shades of gray," Kilmer Principal Deborah Hernandez said. "The kids say, 'If he can high-five, then I can do this.' "
Hernandez said the no-touching rule is meant to ensure that students are comfortable and that crowded hallways and lunchrooms stay safe. She said school officials are allowed to use their judgment in enforcing the rule. Typically, only repeat offenders are reprimanded.
John Daly has angrily rejected a claim by his wife that he assaulted her then scratched his face to cover up the incident. Sherrie Daly made the accusation in court papers filed Monday, three days after her husband called deputies to their Memphis home alleging that his wife had tried to stab him with a steak knife. On Friday Daly appeared for the second round of the Stanford St. Jude Championship near his home with visible scratch marks to his face.
"I just want my fans to know one thing -- I am the victim in this," Daly said in a voicemail message left with SI.com's Seth Davis. "I was stabbed Thursday night of last week in my right cheek and clawed in my left cheek. She's saying it didn't happen. I want my fans to know it happened. I was the only one sober at this time. I just want the fans to know that I love them very much and my wife is a liar, a liar. I'm tired of being a victim of all this crap. She beats me up when I go to sleep. Every time I go to sleep she throws her fists on me. I just married the wrong woman."
Sherrie Daly declined comment when reached by SI.com Tuesday and informed of Daly's remarks.
Later, during a telephone conversation Tuesday afternoon, Daly told Davis that he and his wife had agreed to drop all charges against each other. The two of them were meeting with their lawyers in Memphis on Tuesday. "I want this to end," Daly said. "I still love this woman, as crazy as this is. We both still love each other. We don't know where it's going to go from there, but I am going to drop my charges against her. I don't feel that I can do that to her."
Daly's attorney, Stevan Black, said that the couple would likely decide in the next few weeks whether to proceed with a divorce filing that had been made several months ago. "There is not currently a reconciliation taking place. There is a recent interim agreement in the interest of John's son and stepson," Black said. "[John and Sherrie] are getting together now to restore some peace for the best interests of the children. The children have been negatively impacted by all this publicity."
When deputies arrived at Daly's home, his wife and children were not present and they did not find the knife Daly claims his wife used. No criminal charges were filed but the two-time major champion sought a protective order against his wife. In her court filing, Sherrie Daly alleges her husband had been drinking heavily and "spun out of control" before sexually assaulting her. She says that she called 911 before fleeing to a neighbor's home with their son and another son by a previous relationship.
According to court papers, Sherrie Daly is seeking a restraining order against her husband, possession of their home, custody of the children and continued financial support. She says Daly gives her a monthly cash allowance ranging from $15,000 to $30,000, a claim that provoked laughter from the popular 41-year-old star. "No, no," he told Davis. "It's a lot less. All she wants is money. That's all she wanted from the start. That's just the way it is."
By John Zarrella and Patrick Oppmann CNN
MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- The sparkling blue waters off Miami's Julia Tuttle Causeway look as if they were taken from a postcard. But the causeway's only inhabitants see little paradise in their surroundings.
Five men -- all registered sex offenders convicted of abusing children -- live along the causeway because there is a housing shortage for Miami's least welcome residents.
"I got nowhere I can go!" says sex offender Rene Matamoros, who lives with his dog on the shore where Biscayne Bay meets the causeway.
The Florida Department of Corrections says there are fewer and fewer places in Miami-Dade County where sex offenders can live because the county has some of the strongest restrictions against this kind of criminal in the country.
Florida's solution: house the convicted felons under a bridge that forms one part of the causeway.
The Julia Tuttle Causeway, which links Miami to Miami Beach, offers no running water, no electricity and little protection from nasty weather. It's not an ideal solution, Department of Corrections Officials told CNN, but at least the state knows where the sex offenders are.
Nearly every day a state probation officer makes a predawn visit to the causeway. Those visits are part of the terms of the offenders' probation which mandates that they occupy a residence from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
But what if a sex offender can't find a place to live?
That is increasingly the case, say state officials, after several Florida cities enacted laws that prohibit convicted sexual offenders from living within 2,500 feet of schools, parks and other places where children might gather. (Watch one sex offender describe how he was forced to give up an apartment Video)
Bruce Grant of the Florida Department of Corrections said the laws have not only kept sex offenders away from children but forced several to live on the street.
"Because of those restrictions, because there are many places that children congregate, because of 2,500 feet, that's almost half a mile, that's a pretty long way when you are talking about an urban area like Miami, so it isn't surprising that we say we are trying but we don't have a place for these people to live in," Grant said.
For several of the offenders, the causeway is their second experience at homelessness. Some of them lived for months in a lot near downtown Miami until officials learned that the lot bordered a center for sexually abused children.
Trudy Novicki, executive director of Kristi House, said the offenders' presence put the center's children at risk. "It was very troublesome to learn that across the street there are people who are sex offenders that could be a danger to our children," she said.
Keeping the rats off
With nowhere to put these men, the Department of Corrections moved them under the Julia Tuttle Causeway. With the roar of cars passing overhead, convicted sex offender Kevin Morales sleeps in a chair to keep the rats off him.
"The rodents come up next to you, you could be sleeping the whole night and they could be nibbling on you," he said.
Morales has been homeless and living under the causeway for about three weeks. He works, has a car and had a rented apartment but was forced to move after the Department of Corrections said a swimming pool in his building put him too close to children.
The convicted felons may not be locked up anymore, but they say it's not much of an improvement.
"Jail is anytime much better than this, than the life than I'm living here now," Morales said. "[In jail] I can sleep better. I get fed three times a day. I can shower anytime that I want to."
Morales said that harsher laws and living conditions for sex offenders may have unintended consequences.
"The tougher they're making these laws unfortunately it's scaring offenders and they're saying, 'You know what, the best thing for me to do is run,'" Morales said.
A Miami Herald investigation two years ago found that 1,800 sex offenders in Florida were unaccounted for after violating probation.
Florida's system for monitoring them needs to be fixed, says state Senator Dave Aronberg, who proposed a bill to increase electronic monitoring and create a uniform statewide limit that would keep them 1,500 feet away from places where children go.
'We need to know where these people are at all times," Aronberg said after CNN invited him to tour the bridge where the sex offenders live. "We need residency restrictions, but just don't have this hodgepodge of every city having something different."
State officials say unless the law changes their hands are tied, and for now the sex offenders will stay where they are: under a bridge in the bay.