A young man who was sent to prison for having sex with an underage girl is not barred from seeking visitation with the child born as a result of the crime, the North Carolina Court of Appeals has ruled.
The Sept. 6 decision establishes that certain registered sex offenders cannot be deprived of their right to maintain a parental relationship with their children, said E. Clarke Dummit (pictured) of the Dummit Fradin Law Firm in Winston-Salem.
“I don’t think anyone had addressed this issue at the Court of Appeals,” he said. “We wanted to try to raise awareness of the fact that there are people who are sex offenders and could be good fathers and who want to be good fathers. We need to have a system that looks at them appropriately.”