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Juvenile sex offense and sealing record

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manomano

Junior Member
I was convicted of a juvenile sex offense in Washington State at the age of 12 as rape of a child‐1 class a felony, convicted as a juvenile. I am now 30 and have no other arrests or record in the 18 years since and completed all treatment requirements and such.

My wife is a foreign national and we applied for her immigration and was denied under the Adam Walsh Act which does not allow people convicted of sex offenses to sponsor a spouse for a green card, a fact we had no idea about and only came to light at the end of a three and a half year application process.

As Washington State is now allowing juvenile's to seal their records in regards to sex offenses (they didn't until just a couple years ago) I would like to get my record sealed. As back then I was assigned a grade of level 1 offender which means I am the least concern for re offense and I have a clean record since my hope is that I will be able to get this done.

I got a lawyer to help me take care of my record, she represented me when I was a juvenile for said case above. However after 4 years nothing has come of it except me being about 10,000 dollars lighter.

Our plan was to get the requirement to register lifted then go on to get my record sealed. The first thing we needed me to do was to go to a qualified sex therapist and get a report which stated that I was of no concern to public safety and such and pass a polygraph, all of which I did.

However now my lawyer has said that she need to get the prosecuting attorney to sign off on my motion to have my requirement lifted. Every time she leaves a voice message on his answering machine it costs me 250 dollars and she has left...7? Two years later....nothing has happened. My lawyer or assistant wont even respond to my voice messages or emails. I am paid up on all bills as well.

I really need to get this taken care of especially for my family, what would you suggest I do now?
 


FlyingRon

Senior Member
Note, that the cat is already out of the bag as far as immigration is concerned. Further, many of the investigations for immigration related items INCLUDE anything that has been previously sealed. If you're going to sponsor someone, you're going to need an immigration attorney to fight for this rather than hoping that some magical act of sealing is going to make it go away.

There are extra hoops for sex offenders. First you have to have a certification that you are no longer required to register. While you probably are eligible for that relief, it needs to be done first.
 

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