Sex offenders laws, such as restrictions on where they can and cannot live and how often they have to register with police, are designed to keep your community safe. 

We talked with a mother of a registered sex offender who says her son faces a life-long stigma.  She believes it's unfair that Missouri's sex offender laws put all sex offenders into one category, no matter the circumstances or severity of their crimes.

Janice Holliday's son is dealing with the life-long consequences of a crime *many* teenagers commit.   As a teenager, he slept with a girl he says lied about her age. He'll be a registered sex offender for the rest of his life.

Holliday said, "I just don't want it to happen to someone else's child. My son is a good kid. I just don't want to see another mother go through the devastation I had to go through because it's a nightmare."

Even more of a nightmare to Holliday, her son is grouped with child predators like Michael Devlin, the Kirkwood, Missouri man who kidnapped and molested two young boys.

Holliday said, "True enough, he slept with someone underage, but he shouldn't be in a class with people who rape babies."

Watching her son go through this is prompting Holliday to speak out. She wants lawmakers change the laws to provide for a classing system so teenagers like her son won't have be grouped with all sex predators.

KHQA checked with many legislators in the Missouri General Assembly to find out what they're doing to develop a classification system for offenders. We found out the state's efforts are on hold pending the federal government passing a national classification system. We also contacted Missouri's lawmakers in Washington, DC and the nation's judicial committees to find out if that national classification is in the works. According to everyone I checked with, there are no plans ight now to develop a classification system to help offenders like Holliday's son.

There is one state exception which may help him, though. According to Missouri law, a person under age 19 guilty of a sexual offense with a victim age 13 or older can petition the court to have his name removed from sex offender registry after two years.

But until those two years are up...Holliday's son is in limbo...waiting for the chance to move on with his life.