“I’m not a cheerleader, but I’m going to cheer,” she said. She took selfies with friends, leaned over the edge of the suite to shake fans’ hands and waved pompoms after touchdowns. In a bright-red dress and with blond curls to her waist, Jackie never stopped entertaining, from the moment she posed with a giant, blow-up Coors Light bottle in front of the arena. My favorite part of games is meeting people, and they’re actually thanking us for buying the team.

Said Jackie: “It was totally exhilarating, energetic.

As part of the deal, the Preds will leave UCF after one season and return to Amway Center, where they played from 2011-13. Josh Sanburn is a writer/reporter for TIME in New York.The Preds had been without an owner since David Pearsall stepped down in May, and Siegel is the franchise’s third owner in the past year. Sofia Valienteis a fine art photographer based in South Florida. This is more about confronting the stigma,” Valiente says. “I try not to address what is right and what is wrong. Valiente says her goal with Miracle Village was to portray the community’s residents in a way most people have never seen. I was arrested & charged of molesting my children.” The course of events that led up to me being arrested is too long of a story and very painful for me to speak about in detail. He told me that I was never going to leave him with our children. “He did drugs and drank until he passed out. “I married a man that abused me,” writes Rose. Parents were involved & I was charged with 2nd degree sexually battery (injury not likely).” “My crime was being in a relationship with my 16 yr old girlfriend. “I had sex with my younger brother,” writes Matt, one Miracle Village resident. She also had many of the community’s residents write letters describing their past crimes. Valiente’s photos of the village’s members are subtle and are oftentimes straight-on portraits, an aesthetic that takes on the look of traditional documentary photographs. The village is not only physically removed from populated areas-it’s surrounded by hundreds of acres of sugar cane and is located several miles from nearby Pahokee-but Witherow’s ministry, Matthew 25, also provides support for those living there and interviews other sex offenders looking to relocate to determine if they’d be a good fit for the community. In 2009, Dick Witherow, a local evangelical pastor, founded Miracle Village as a sort of haven for area sex offenders struggling to find housing. In some counties in Florida, sex offenders are banned from being within 3,000 feet of places where children congregate, making living in most towns and cities virtually impossible. Others can’t own a smartphone.Ī more pressing difficulty, however, is often finding a place to live. They can’t interact with minors, even if they’re family. Many residents have to wear GPS-monitored ankle bracelets that keep tabs on them at all times. Curfew for some in Miracle Village is 7 p.m. Those restrictions, many victims’ families argue, are necessary to prevent sex offenders from engaging in further criminal activity.Ĭities and counties oftentimes have their own laws, some more stringent than others. curfew and they can’t live within at least 1,000 feet of a school, day care center, park, playground or any other place where children often gather.

Sexual offenders in the state must notify public officials whenever they move they’re subject to a 10 p.m.

But states have their own varying laws, Florida’s being some of the most stringent. That registry originated in the 1990s when Congress passed legislation that severely targeted those who commit violent crimes and crimes against children. There are almost 800,000 federally registered sex offenders in the U.S. The result is Miracle Village, a book produced and published by Benetton’s communication research center Fabrica that profiles the community’s residents preparing for work, interacting alongside family members and dealing with the daily restrictions that limit virtually everything they do, from their Internet use to when they can be outside. Sofia Valiente, a 24-year-old photographer and a resident of Florida since she was 10, began visiting the community in January 2013, spending a total of three months there and even living in the residential complex for several weeks. Most of its residents are convicted sex offenders. Today, they house migrants of a different sort. Along southern Florida’s Muck City Road, southeast of the state’s massive Lake Okeechobee and hidden among hundreds of acres of sugar cane, sits Miracle Village, pop: approximately 150.įor decades, its tiny one-story residences housed migrants who worked the nearby sugar fields.

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