Why Megan's Law doesn't work - Law to protect children often frustrates parents

When Redwood City resident Hamilton Woods heard that a sex offender had moved into his Friendly Acres neighborhood, the father of four decided to find out more about his new neighbor.

Woods knew the sheriff's department had a statewide listing of sex offenders known as the Megan's Law database.

To see the list, Woods had to drive to downtown Redwood City during working hours, sign a form saying he was not a sex offender, and wait behind a security window as a sheriff's department employee ran a criminal background check on him and photocopied his driver's license.

When that was over, Woods was taken to a special booth and given 15 minutes to wade through dozens of names and photos of sex offenders living within his zip code, and attempt to identify his new neighbor from the mug shots.

"It's useless information unless you have a good memory and hours and hours to sit there," Woods said.

Megan's Law was intended to give the public better access to information about sex offenders in their midst. But four years after it was passed by the California Legislature, residents don't know the database exists, don't bother to use it or, like Woods, find the system cumbersome and ineffective.

Even supporters of the system -- including the state attorney general's office -- admit that too few people use the database.

While state records show 29,000 people viewed the database last year, and an estimated 100,000 have seen it since its inception, that's still only a minute fraction of the state's 34 million residents, according to Mike Van Winkle of the attorney general's office.

"We acknowledge more people out there could use it," Van Winkle told the Daily News.

The San Mateo County Sheriff's Office in Redwood City had 213 people show up last year to view the database, or fewer than one each working day.

Officials in Palo Alto and San Mateo, two cities that allow the public to view the database at the police station, say only a few visitors stop in to view the registry each month.

Those who have been following the evolution of the database say it isn't doing what it was intended to do.

"What wasn't taken into consideration was the abject laziness of the population," said Marc Klaas, father of 12-year-old murder victim Polly Klaas and a child safety advocate. "People don't want to go all the way down to the police station to query the CD-ROM."

Megan's Law has also been blasted by criminal rights advocates, who say the public database marks offenders with a lifetime "scarlet letter."

"I have a lot of sympathy for the people being hounded for the rest of their lives," said Stephen Elrick, a senior trial lawyer with the Santa Clara County Alternate Defender Office. Elrick is representing Franklin Means, a former Burlingame building inspector accused of child molestation.

"Let's face it, if (police) have got an unsolved sex case, whose cage do you think they're going to start rattling?" Elrick said.

Meanwhile, the number of registered sex offenders in California has climbed to 87,000, or roughly one in every 180 adult men.

And just two months ago, an 8-year-old East Palo Alto girl on her way to a Halloween party was snatched off the street by a stranger on a bike who raped and then abandoned her, according to police reports.

Megan's Law is named after Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old New Jersey girl who was raped and murdered in 1994 by a convicted sex offender who moved in across the street without her family knowing.

The law, which requires local law enforcement agencies to notify communities about potentially dangerous sex offenders in their midst, was signed into federal law by President Clinton in May 1996.

Before Megan's Law, California has required sex offenders since 1950 to register with police every time they move to a new community. But although police had records on the whereabouts of sex offenders, the information wasn't available to the public.

Now, every state in the nation has a version of Megan's Law on the books, with varying requirements. Twenty-three states make a sex offender database available to the public on the Internet. Florida's database on the Internet includes sex offenders' home addresses.

In California, residents must visit a sheriff's office or police station to view the database. There, they can search for sex offenders by name, zip code or birth date.

California's database includes photos for most offenders, a list of sex offenses they've been charged with, aliases they use and whether they have scars or tattoos.

While people convicted of nearly any sex crime must register with police, the public can only view information on offenders considered serious or high-risk. A third category, simply called "other," includes those convicted of lesser sex crimes, such as exhibitionism or incest.

The sex offender registry can also be searched by calling a 900 number set up by the state. It costs $10 to check two names.

Sheriff's departments in every county are required to make the Megan's Law database available to the public, as are cities with population greater than 200,000.

Palo Alto and Mountain View have opted to provide public access to the database even though they're not required to do so.

In San Mateo County, the city of San Mateo lets its residents view the registry.

But residents of smaller cities -- including East Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Burlingame -- are referred to the sheriff's office in Redwood City if they want to view the database.

That means a trip to downtown Redwood City during working hours, finding a parking space and then passing through an airport-style metal detector to get into the county government center.

Prospective database viewers must sign a form saying they're not sex offenders themselves. Then they wait behind a security window while a staff member makes a copy of their driver's license and checks their criminal background.

Then the viewer is led to a special booth with a sliding plastic door that is set up next to the front desk. A glass window into the booth lets the desk clerk on duty keep an eye on the person using the database, and a digital timer placed in the window counts down the 15-minute session.

If the viewer takes out a pen and paper and starts taking notes, the desk clerk will tell him or her to stop. Under Megan's Law, members of the public who copy or distribute information from the database can be charged with a misdemeanor and spend up to a year in jail.

And police or sheriff's departments have the discretion to ban note taking or set a time limit, according to Van Winkle of the attorney general's office. Those who visit the attorney general's office to see the database can take notes, Van Winkle said.

San Mateo residents can view the sex offender database by appointment at the police station on Delaware Street. It usually takes one day to get in to see the records after making the appointment.

Andrea Lozano, the police department's information services supervisor, sits next to the resident using the database on a computer terminal inside an office, giving tips on searching the records and making sure nothing is written down.

Law enforcement officials say the many restrictions placed on using the database are so that viewers comply with its intent -- to allow residents to protect themselves and their families from sexual predators.

The fear is that wider dissemination of the sex offender information -- such as by posting it on the Internet -- would make it easy for sex offenders to network and share strategies, according to the attorney general's Web site.

Van Winkle said wider distribution of the information could lead to vigilantism.

For example, East Palo Alto residents who found out a paroled rapist had moved into their neighborhood successfully drove the man away. Jack Manes, who was nicknamed the "doggie door rapist" because he invaded homes through pet doors, asked police to move him out of East Palo Alto in November 1998 after demonstrations erupted outside his home.

While some say the prospect of visiting the sheriff's office discourages many would-be viewers, Burlingame Police Chief Gary Missel said the trip wouldn't stop parents who are concerned about the safety of their children.

And Missel said the database isn't the only way residents can get information about sex offenders. He said residents are welcome to call their local police department to discuss concerns about someone they think might be a sexual predator.

In a well-publicized incident after California enacted Megan's Law, parents in San Bernardino spotted a longtime Little League coach on the sex offender registry after rumors began circulating that he had a history of child molestation. A sheriff's investigator then began questioning Little Leaguers and found that Norman Watson had been molesting boys for the past eight years. He was ultimately convicted of 39 counts of lewd acts with children and was sentenced to 84 years in prison.

Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, admits there's no way of knowing how many sex offenders are stopped from committing new crimes.

The best evidence Lockyer has that Megan's Law is doing some good is the response from people who view the database at booths set up at state and county fairs, Barankin said.

Van Winkle, also of the attorney general's office, estimated that one in every seven or eight people who view the database at the fair recognizes someone they know.

The crafters of Megan's Law tried to strike a balance between the public'sright to know about sex offenders intheir midst and the offender's right to privacy.

Users of the public database sign an agreement that the information is to be used only "to protect themselves and their children from sex offenders." Officials say the ban on taking notes from the database is a further protection of offenders' privacy.

But some say the law doesn't do enough to protect the rights of people who have already served their sentence.

"This registration is like wearing the scarlet letter and it has become an instrument of social ostracism," said John Webster, an unsuccessful Libertarian candidate in last month's election for the state Senate seat that represents San Jose and Sunnyvale. Webster was convicted of child pandering in 1990. "There's no way you can go out and be an accepted member of your community once your name is on this list."

Webster, a San Jose resident, told the Daily News he answered a personal ad from the "swingers" classified section of a weekly newspaper and began having lengthy telephone conversations with the woman who placed the ad.

During the conversations Webster mentioned that he had wished his own parents had been more open with him about sex and that if he ever met the woman he would consider letting her "educate" his own son, Webster said. The "woman" turned out to be a San Jose police officer and Webster was arrested.

The "offer" of his son was nothing more than a continuation of the telephone fantasy, Webster said. And since his ex-wife has custody of his two children and Webster is only allowed supervised visits, such a meeting with the woman from the personal ad would be impossible, he said.

Despite this, Webster pleaded no contest to the charge of child pandering in exchange for a promise that he wouldn't have to register as a sex offender. But six years later, when Megan's Law was passed in California, Webster was informed that he would have to register after all. Webster refused and took the case to court. After his former public defender testified that the deal had indeed been struck, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge John Ball ruled that Webster would be exempt from registering.

Just as criminals are sentenced to prison for specific amounts of time, Webster said there should be an expiration date to an offender's listing on the Megan's Law database depending on the crime.

"There has to be some kind of recourse for second chances," Webster said. "Otherwise you're essentially destroying people's lives, and I don't see what that has to do with protecting kids."

It's an argument that's been the rallying point of the American Civil Liberties Union's opposition to Megan's Law -- the illegality of double jeopardy, or punishing someone twice for the same crime.

Elizabeth Schroeder, an attorney and director of the ACLU of Southern California, has questioned whether the purpose of the notification laws are to let the public "vent its anger at sex offenders, like a stoning in the Bible." The ACLU says it's against notification laws because it won't prevent sex offenders from committing new crimes and rehabilitated former offenders have no chance at a fresh start.

Law enforcement officials argue that sex offenders are extremely likely to commit the same offenses again, and so extra safeguards are needed.

"They have a real poor record of rehabilitation," said Burlingame Police Chief Gary Missel.

But Missel acknowledged the public database would be "one heck of a hindrance" for an offender who is truly trying to reform.

Dr. Douglas Tucker, a forensic psychiatrist who evaluates sex offenders for the state prison system to see if they're fit for release, said Megan's Law is "useless."

When people find out there's a sex offender in the neighborhood, the usual response is suspicion and prejudice, Tucker said.

"That just makes it more difficult for the offender to develop healthy relationships and forces them to remain in a deviant lifestyle," said Tucker, also an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco.

When people check the list and don't find any offenders in their neighborhood they get a false sense of security, Tucker said.

"There's a far greater number of sex offenders who are out there than just the names on the database," Tucker said. "Some people are never caught, and they're out there just the same."

A major factor working against the Megan's Law database is that many people don't know it exists.

A Peninsula father whose son was molested by Robert Hunter Wilson of Menlo Park told the Daily News he didn't know about the public database before his son was attacked.

"Megan's Law could be a valuable resource, but I don't think enough people know about it," the father said. "I certainly regret not going and checking it out when Wilson first came into our lives."

Wilson, an attorney who has resigned from the state bar, was fired from his job as a prosecutor in Sacramento County after he molested two boys in 1979. He spent a year in a locked mental ward -- then the standard punishment for child molesters.

In 1991, he was prosecuted by San Mateo County District Attorney Jim Fox for failing to register as a sex offender. Fox discovered the lapse when Wilson was defending several men charged with importing children for sex. While Wilson was acquitted of the charge, Fox called it "ludicrous" that Wilson wouldn't have known he was required to register.

Mike Piha, president of the Palo Alto Little League and Palo Alto Knights junior football program, said he didn't know the Megan's Law database was available at the police station. Most of the people who volunteer with the two sports leagues are parents of players, Piha said. The other volunteers must provide three references which are checked, Piha said.

When a parent suggested last year that more thorough background checks be performed, other parents balked, Piha said.

Another hole in the Megan's Law system is that only those who have been convicted of a serious sex crime are listed. Many molestation cases involve perpetrators with no sex crimes on their criminal records.

Richard Allen Davis, the convicted killer of Polly Klaas, had no prior convictions for sex offenses and wouldn't have been on the public database had it been available when the girl was kidnapped from her Petaluma home in 1993, according to her father.

Marc Klaas said that although Davis had been charged with a previous sex crime, the charge was dropped as part of a plea bargain.

But listing people suspected of committing sex crimes on the database -- rather than only convicted offenders -- would face staunch opposition from civil libertarians.

Davis was also a drifter, and may have been hard to find on the database if someone checked by zip code, which is the only location given for offenders. Sex offenders are required to reregister with police when they move, but some may not comply.

It's not uncommon for sex offenders to move frequently -- in part to avoid harassment, said Santa Clara County Sheriff's Sgt. Bob Schiller of the county's Megan's Law enforcement division. There are also sex offenders who are transients and must reregister every 90 days, Schiller said.

The database is updated monthly and therefore doesn't show changes of address that have occurred more recently.

"The database may say John Smith lives at 123 Main St., but it turns out John Smith moved out a month ago and we have no idea where he is," Schiller said.

Palo Alto police Detective Jean Bready said she knows several sex offenders who register in Palo Alto during the summer and spring months but go to Sunnyvale in the winter when the National Guard Armory shelter opens.

As an increasing number of states post their sex offender databases on the Internet, a debate is brewing over whether California should do the same.

Officials are leery of going online with the database, fearing the law will then get knocked down in court by privacy advocates. So far, California's version of Megan's Law has withstood court challenges.

And the attorney general's office claims that an Internet listing would make it too easy for sex offenders to network with one another.

James Sibley, a prosecutor with the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Sexual Assault Unit, said sex offenders do seek each other out.

"There's no question pedophiles are using the Internet to find each other and share ideas," Sibley said. "For them, it normalizes their behavior when they can find someone else who's doing the same things."

Pedophiles will use chat rooms and Web sites to direct each other to park locations, give names of social service agencies looking for "big brothers" and even direct each other to the nearest video arcades and shopping malls, Sibley said.

But State Sen. Jackie Speier, who was one of the co-authors of Megan's Law when she was in the state Assembly in 1996, said the pluses of moving the database to the Internet outweigh the minuses.

"Information should be made available to the public with the least effort required," Speier said. "Otherwise it's not truly public disclosure."

Some police departments are posting maps on their Web sites that show the general location where sex offenders are residing. Palo Alto posts such a map, as does Pleasanton.

Palo Alto shows where sex offenders live by marking the map with house symbols. Most of the sites are in south Palo Alto, withthe exception of a residential hotel and a low-income apartment complex in the downtown area.

Attorney General Lockyer hasn't taken a position on posting the sex offender registry on the Internet. "What the Attorney General supports is making this information much more accessible to the public," said Barankin, Lockyer's spokesman.

But Hamilton Woods, the Redwood City resident who couldn't find out if he had a neighbor who is a sex criminal, has no doubt that access to the Megan's Law database needs to be expanded.

"There's only one computer in the whole city," Woods said. "That's not really giving people access to the information."

Oklahoma has recently dramatically improved its online listing of sex offenders. There are now photos for many offenders. It's stunning, actually, how many people are on the list. I do not believe I have ever been acquainted with any man who would rape a woman, let alone a child...but one doesn't always know, does one? (I've known some people who were a little kinky, but that's different from being willing to scar another person for life.)

http://docapp8.doc.state.ok.us/servlet/page?_pageid=190&_dad=portal30&_schema=PORTAL30

One of the things IL actually does right is the on-line sex offender database. It's really easy to use. Just enter the city or county and it will bring up all offenders. Most have pictures and addresses. It doesn't list the exact crime, but it does say something like, "victim under 18" and I think it also lists under 13, over 18, and family member.

Several years ago we had this man working at our company. He seemed normal and by that I mean you wouldn't cross the street to get away from him. Clean cut, about 28 years old, was engaged to a pretty girl. He got fired because he got caught looking at internet porn- not once, but three times!! Right about this time is when IL put thier sex offender data base on-line. My friend had e-mailed me the address and I was looking at it one afternoon. The very last name for our county was this guy who had gotten fired for looking at porn! I called over a co-worker and she knew where he lived and verfied that it was his address. It was pretty creepy.

I see a huge difference between Under-18, Under-15, Under-13. I also (sigh) see a difference between offenders who merely looked at or collected some cheesecake-style borderline teen porn and the Westerfield types who are aroused by little kids--but the law doesn't make that distinction, most places.

Under-13 offenders ought to be executed, poof. Gone. Blow them away. Make it fast and humane and then drive a stake through their hearts, burn the corpse, dismember the remains, scatter them on a glacier. They are dangerous vampires. Violent rapists likewise, whether the victim is 8 or 80. The species does not need anyone who is sexually excited by doing physical harm to the reproductive or mental health of other people.

We can't heal these twisted minds or make these people safe to be around, and we have nowhere to put them where they can't victimize somebody. So off 'em. (Putting rapists in with other prisoners doesn't reduce the rape rate, it would seem--it merely gives them a more limited pool of victims.)

Under 13, few girls (or boys, for that matter) are physically mature enough to have even consensual sexual intercourse without being damaged physically or mentally. Between 18 and 15, however, some girls can pass for being of age and I believe that neurologically normal girls of this age can consent. (They do, far too often and too readily.) I read recently of a man who had been convicted of rape of a 15 year old he picked up in a BAR. Whether the sexual activity was consensual or not, I found reasonable his argument that he thought she was of age, given the venue of their meeting. She also LEFT WITH HIM to go somewhere else. Is that consent? If he hurt her against his will, he still committed a crime--but she consented to something when she voluntarily left the bar with him!

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.