
The police photograph is chilling. In grainy black and white tones, it shows 13-year-old Martin Andrews sitting in a makeshift box, his leg chained. The look in his eyes is one of fear, fatigue and disbelief. He had
power levelingjust been rescued from a nightmare."I was abducted by a sexually violent predator by the name of Richard Ausley, who had been twice convicted for sexually assaulting young boys, and he had taken me for eight days," Andrews recalled of his ordeal 37 years ago. "I was left to die."As a survivor of a sex crime, Andrews is one face of an issue the Supreme Court revisits Tuesday: civil commitment, which allows the government to keep sex offenders in custody even after they have served their sentences. Twenty states have such laws, including Virginia, where Andrews was held captive
wow levelingand repeatedly assaulted.During Tuesday's arguments, the justices expressed some doubts about whether the state's duty to protect the public from "sexually dangerous" individuals might trump due process.