Sex Offender Registry

Billy Binion | From the December 2023 issue

When Meaghan Ybos was raped in 2003, it was the sort of assault you see more often in cinematic crime fiction than in reality. A stranger, wearing a ski mask, broke into her home, held a knife to her throat, and forced himself on her.

Twenty years later, Ybos is president of Women Against Registry, an organization dedicated to ending sex offender registration across the country. Ybos' advocacy started down that unorthodox path when her rapist was finally caught, nine years after the attack. She then learned that the Memphis Police Department had neglected to test the majority of the rape kits it collected, including hers. Since then, she's been pushing back against the myth of the rape kit "backlog," pointing out that in much of the country it isn't actually a backlog. The police departments simply weren't testing thousands of kits.

In May, Reason's Billy Binion interviewed Ybos by phone.

Q: You are a........

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