welcome to the secrets of college planning on your host anthony uva and today we're going to get some insight into new jersey law and some information for college my guest today is barnett  the retired new jersey superior court just judge and he also wrote a book called sex crimes in new jersey understanding the process and the law so welcome to the show thank you thanks for having me so usually i start my guess where they went to college so when you go to school i went to rutgers university fantastic so how did you go about picking rutgers university is it just that they wanted you and just went straight there well it was not a difficult choice i grew up in new brunswick and my dad went to wreckers graduated twenty one and everybody i knew was going to read yours and you a question where you going to college the answer is you know to go to rutgers it's right here in town and you can drive there and that's what happened and that's what happens great that's a good school good so you graduated rocker's how did you go from there to becoming the superior court judge of the state of new jersey at the time i went to rutgers law school in new york graduated in one thousand nine hundred sixty five after that i went into the united states army for two i didn't have to i wasn't a mandatory age requirement but that's why i do something else the fantastic so that gets us into well let's start out with the book first being that the book is here sex crimes in new jersey what  what is it about as a work well when i was on the bench i was primarily in the criminal division and for the last six or seven years i was a presiding criminal judge of middlesex county i don't know how it happened but i was assigned to do all of the sex crimes and not sure why i got that up but it was the idea it's a very complicated area and it's unique they're different it's a different motion practice the law is very different and i thought it would be a good idea to write a book which is primarily aimed at each lawyers assistant prosecutors defense counsel but also as for psychologists for educators and things like that peter so what's the what's the detail of the book what what does a go into what goes into everything it goes the way the book is written and i wrote it with alice and my co author who is very smart we need somebody with a lot of experience and somebody who's very smart sure the first one so we wrote the book and it's in the various different areas or go over some subset subset of law a lot of procedure and also there's various things such as there's a lot of special evidence rules with regard to such crimes there's a special rule for children of sex crimes evidence rules there's also rules with regard to investigations there's also rules all sorts of rules so that's what we go into but one of the things the two things that really are interesting to know about is that of what the concept of consent the concept of consent is a very difficult concept because for instance when i would try  a trial involving sex by force of course when they find it when they wrote it in the statute they said a sexual assault is penetration with force however they never got a man to define force would have been nice but so the supreme court had it to find it and most people who sit on the jury think of force as physical force or you somebody smack them and it's not it's basically a lack of affirmative permission which is a huge difference and which poses all sorts of problems with people in high school especially people in college and in my opinion especially athletes in college so it's a very difficult the other thing that is very interesting is what's called the  which talks about it in a trial can you get into before the jury a woman usually a woman's past sexual history or how she was dressed very controversial stuff  share of drug cases i mean there's just no more numerous so when i took the when i would have these sentencings under the law a person is being sentenced has a right to address the person for a program they want to be in a rehab program well this group of people that i was dealing with if you don't have money you don't have insurance and none of them did there's very little out there back in two thousand and one who are drug rehab so i got the idea i think i'll start my own drug program which was a bold move and i i didn't tell anybody in the justice system because it would have wound up being committed to death so i just started i went to the warden at the county jail in north brunswick and he gave us a housing you  wonderful person so i teamed up with him and we started the program and i realize i have the money so i had a stroke of luck i contacted some people i know and we got a substantial seed money from robert wood johnson foundation and going on like that and so on october the first two thousand and one we started the program was seven men i call them my seven years we have well over eight hundred graduates are reset of ism rate is pretty good i mean do you know the general recidivism rate is like two thirds sure ours is about fifteen points better which org so i see these people on the street and they are so happy to see me and they're so grateful not all of them are doing well but a significant number are doing well and  i mean i run into people who have sense all the time some serious and to this day do you get donations from people yeah you do well we run a golf outing ok the money the battleground country cup act over second it's really fun event i'm still not quite sure what that is because there's a lot of of councils in this world a lot of retired judges go into mediation so i have guide to mediation and i do a lot of employment litigation very interesting law against discrimination whistleblower cases kind of interesting so i do that i do that that is mainly what i do and then you also said you want to it has a lot of good things to it some things are a little the scope is a little broad but it didn't happen too far from here you know  so the do the legislation new jersey and as far as a this is the fastest bill ever to go through the the legislation passed meghan's law which has a couple of components to it actually the real name is called the registration a notification act ok so anybody who's convicted of certain sex crimes has to register with the local police in a town in which they live and every time they move and sometimes they have to reregister every year sometimes every three months depending upon what they were convicted of so there's a provision in meg insula that says that most of the people who are registrants and there are thousands of registrants can be removed from the registry if they make an application to the court after fifteen years has run from their either their conviction or from the time they get out of jail ok so it's very important because it's it's a very heavy weight to hang around your neck for for so  very few stranger to stranger sexual source but you also have a significant number of what we used to call statutory rape the kid who's nineteen the boy who's nineteen and a girl who's  what i will do is prepare prepare prepare a petition notify the proper people notify the parole officers and the notification for is  not a vacation or registration but there's also something else in there that's really the killer in that community supervision for life but that can be removed after fifteen years or so while the community supervision for c c there's nothing in itself that says you can't do this you can't do this you have to do this yet that is what you have to do under meghan's law is register report so really supervision for life means you can't go here you can't go there you need permission to leave the state it's very honoris so that's really what you want removed so i am in the business of trying to help people do that do that and then that was the you the last thing that you you wanted to discuss was college a presentation yes what type of presentation for colleges do you want to discuss well about two years  stuff i think there most of the defensive backfield is in jail so i had got in touch with the coach and asked him if i could make a presentation so about two years maybe two or three years ago this f i made a presentation to the rutgers football team about lots of things how they could get you and the sports people probably football and basketball players are very vulnerable because when they stick out when football players are beginning their scope or as a talk show as they kind of stick out on campus and they're vulnerable because they're very popular and people want to be their friends and speak want to help them and people women like to be very friendly with them and that's fine as long as it's on a consensual basis so what is complicating the thing is alcohol and drugs because you can't consent by one terribly in affirmatively if you don't have the capacity to consent so i tried to explain to them the definition of consent that we talked about before right that you know he can't get a girl drunk and have sex with and think you're going to walk and they say well i had something to drink too doesn't work that way it's really a one way street which you probably should be and i explain to them that the lecture that i gave is called the the perils of sex on campus the perils pleasures and penalties because if you can do if you're convicted of sexual assault that's a second degree crime and you can be sent to jail for ten years while that's a long time you're and i try to explain to them as best i can i think i can what's going on and to think about consent is that it can be exercised at any time  and she says stop right there right before you go any further says so they the guys have to understand the just because you got to first base second base and third base doesn't mean you can get home plate  woman has a right to use a woman because that's ninety five percent of the cases a woman has a right to say stop right there i want to go any further and just because someone may have had sex with you in another time or had some type of sexual interaction at another time doesn't give you a core point every time you go out with her so it's really a perilous minefield area now that you do this different campuses with just the rocker's well what i'm trying to promote is different campuses but with the it's more than just advising the students because you've got to look at places like bell or penn state think stanford duke not only do the students get jammed up but the administrators get jammed up and it kind of dovetails into my experience in employment litigation because you have to protect yourself you have to protect yourself and i'm talking about the administrators the athletic directors you know people are jobs raising money they don't have time for  but they've got to train their stay off to do this kind of thing because if they get later get sued at least they'll have in place that somebody who is a retired supreme court judge came in and explain what they needed to do that's part of it so do the administrators they have to go basically almost out of their way to keep track of these kids because it could be at any moment any time and and constantly reiterate that information to him is that correct yeah i mean the kid in college they can't go out on a date with him in high school and you're kidding yourself if you don't think there's a lot of drinking and drug they've got to protect themselves and their children in this case if they want to know what the law is they ought to know the parameters of a relationship they want to know what to do in that today if there is there something out in the public that that sure i worry so they really have to sit down but they have to know with itself raising children is i remember i forget who said it is part love import guerrilla warfare it's true yeah so you have to know your child that's the first thing and you can't let the child do things that you don't know about i mean today is far more difficult different parents i don't know the answer to that you know being that you know you have the years you have a child that only has a single parent and that parent has to be the mother and the father i don't know the answer but actively making sure everyone should know what's going on in the paternity has the drinking i mean they can't be there right but you got it sometimes you got to smack among top of her head and say look  federation gym class right it's all over it's all over well we're coming to the end of our show and usually i asked my ideas what advice you want to give to the parents that are out there well i kind of mentioned it  lives but it's i mean you get a unified sometimes you find out a little late but you've got to build the trust i think that's the main thing you've got to build the trust you your kids