Free Republic

SNOHOMISH — The patch under the bridge is closed in by brambles. Rodent tracks crisscross in the dirt. It may be dry, but still it's not fit for human habitation. Unless you're a sex offender, that is.The underside of the 88th Street bridge, near this river town's greenhouses and horse farms, is where state government last week assigned a released rapist to sleep. David J. Torrence, who assaulted a 16-year-old girl in 1995, had completed his latest prison term (for failing to register as a sex offender.) He had no place to go. So officials gave him a sleeping bag...

Kimberly Coulter remembers riding her bike all over St. Paul’s east side as a kid, not a worry on her mind. These days she’s a Cottage Grove mother of two, and though she says she feels safe raising her kids in their quiet neighborhood near Grey Cloud Elementary School, Coulter said the knowledge a convicted sex offender lives nearby leaves her wary of letting her 10- and 12-year-old even go around the block. “It’s scary,” she said after last week’s public forum on sexual predators hosted by the Cottage Grove Police Department at Cottage Grove Junior High. Coulter said she...

Poteet Mayor Reverses Decision To Resign After Child Indecency PleaLast Update: 10:22 am SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- The mayor of Poteet says he no longer plans to resign over his guilty plea to child indecency charges. Lino Donato pleaded guilty last week to two counts of indecency by exposure and no contest to one count of indecency by contact for incidents between 1996 and 2000. Donato's guilty plea cut short his trial on accusations he exposed himself to two girls and improperly touched one of them. He planned a meeting today to resign as mayor of the town about 30...

"If I do escape, I promise you I will kill and rape again, and I will enjoy every minute of it." Statement to the court by convicted sexual predator Westley Allan Dodd. The motivations of sexual predators vary widely from one to the next. For some, it's the feeling of power achieved by dominating a weaker, younger person. For others, it's the innocence of a young child that generates the attraction. Still others see only an "object" with which to fulfill their twisted desires. Regardless of the forces that drive a sexual predator, the results are the same. Many of...

RALEIGH, N.C. - MySpace.com will provide a number of state attorneys general with data on registered sex offenders who use the popular social networking web site, the company said Monday. Attorneys general from eight states demanded last week that the company provide data on how many registered sex offenders are using the site and where they live. MySpace initially refused, citing federal privacy laws. MySpace obtained the data from Sentinel Tech Holding Corp., which the company partnered with in December to build a database with information on sex offenders.

They caught him! He's been arrested ... for the 12th time!! This ugly fella has been in and out and out and in and is such a repeat offender he could serve as the mascot for the revolving door of justice. He's a former psychiatric patient, homeless with a lengthy record dating back to 1981. WHY was he loose on the street and able to attack this poor woman? Because our courts have NO spine! NO teeth! It's the 'awww, poor you' defense all over again. Oh my when will we demand much more from our judges, our courts, our...

February 1, 2007 Posing as a Family, Sex Offenders Stun a Town By JENNIFER STEINHAUER EL MIRAGE, Ariz., Jan. 31 — To neighbors, Casey Price was a seventh grader with acne and a baseball cap who lived an unremarkable life among a bevy of male relatives. [...] In nearby Surprise, where Casey was enrolled as a 12-year-old in a public school for four months, he was regarded as a shy, average student with chronic attendance problems. A man identified as his uncle had registered him, attended curriculum night and e-mailed his teachers about homework assignments. Now Casey is in jail,...

After spending three years on the run, a Tucson man who pleaded guilty to attempted sexual conduct with a minor was apprehended on Sunday as he entered the United States from Mexico, an official said Wednesday. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the Douglas port of entry, about 100 miles southeast of Tucson, encountered Francisco Castro Bustamante, 64, during the routine screening of those applying for admission into the country, said Brian Levin, a spokesman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection field of operations office. Bustamante is a Mexican citizen with legal permanent residency in the United States,...

No one in attendance voiced opposition to rules submitted by Attorney General Jim Petro's office to the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review, consisting of members of the Ohio House and Senate. The committee's decision not to interfere with the rules puts Ohio in a position to become the first state to test a "civil registry."

MINNEAPOLIS - A man convicted of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman he met in a Minneapolis nightclub has been deported to Mexico. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Bloomington says 36-year-old Domingo Penaloza-Cabrera was turned over to Mexican authorities on Wednesday. Penaloza-Cabrera was convicted in a Hennepin County District Court in 2001 of kidnapping and attempted first-degree sexual conduct. Authorities say instead of taking her home, he drove her to the Mississippi River, sexually assaulted her and then beat her with a metal pipe and tried to drown her. He served sentences of 48 months for the...

FORT ATKINSON - William J. Smith sparked the curiosity of his neighbors almost from the day he moved to Jefferson County last fall. It had been years since anyone had tried to start a church in Fort Atkinson, and Smith's effort was particularly unusual.He installed an altar in his apartment and invited people for daily morning Mass and evening prayers, calling his undertaking "A Vatican-Free Monastic Community."There would be more surprises for neighbors.Smith, 55, was convicted in 1989 of two counts of second- degree sexual assault in Door County for having sex with a 15-year-old boy. Smith was pastor of...

ST. PETER, Minn. (AP) - A rapist who broke out of a state treatment center here along with three other men remained on the lam Sunday, authorities said. Michael Dale Benson, 42, squeezed through a broken window Saturday night with the three others, who were later caught. Police scaled back their ground search efforts in the city after 3 p.m. Sunday, believing Benson may have left the area in a stolen car, said police Chief Matt Peters. "We feel that we've run out of our leads in all that regards," he said. Authorities had contacted other law enforcement agencies in...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor was allowed to work on campus for months after he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting young girls even though some colleagues were threatened by his presence, according to a document released Thursday.

Two guys from Minneapolis embark on a four-state tour of topless clubs, shelling out for champagne, lap dances and various favors from VIP-room strippers. The men are Minneapolis police officers. They are on duty. And their commanders know exactly what the officers are doing, handing them cash advances for their cross-country foray. Minneapolis police sent two officers on the road in 2004 to evaluate whether the city should grant a liquor license to a Denver businessman who owns a chain of strip clubs. The license would have given the businessman, Troy Lowrie, control of a well-known downtown Minneapolis club.

On the hard drives, investigators found Internet links saved by Dunston that included "Child sex murders and condoned Internet kiddy porn," "excited angels," "free Lolitas gallery" and others. Some of the children depicted in the images have been identified by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, according to court documents. Statistics on the number of prosecutions for obtaining child pornography using a cell phone were not available Tuesday. A Canadian expert in October warned that child pornographers were going high-tech.

A downtown St. Paul charter high school will go ahead with tonight's play about the homeless but decided Wednesday to exclude the man who inspired it after learning he was convicted eight years ago of third-degree sexual misconduct. The short set of monologues — based on young mothers, former white-collar managers and drug dealers whose lives converged at a St. Paul homeless shelter — was the brainchild of a Dorothy Day Center resident. Over the past few weeks, he teamed up with the drama club director of the Minnesota Business Academy to transfer those real-life personalities onto the stage. But...

Hour 2: Chris Hansen did this excellent expose on Dateline NBC last week. In the piece they posed as young boys on the internet and lured sexual predators to a home. Once the men entered the home they confronted them. Besides the rabbi, there was a doctor, a special education teacher, an army man, a defense contractor, a medical student… the list goes on. Not one of these men, if you saw him on the street would stand out in a crowd. This piece was a scary view into the world of internet predators. What is your major malfunction guys!

Aug 4, 2005 : 11:23 am ET KERNERSVILLE, N.C. -- The director of a church youth group has been charged with sex crimes involving two teenage girls in his group. Timothy Paul Rowell, 23, of Kernersville, is accused of statutory sex offense and indecent liberties with a child. He had worked at Main Street Baptist Church. The incidents happened between April 20 and June 1 with girls between 13 and 14 years old, police said. The church suspended Rowell from his duties June 22 and he was fired a week later. "We ... did not see this coming, and basically...

A convicted sex offender who authorities believe kidnapped a Fernley 8-year-old was not registered with Lyon County, an official said Monday. Lt. John Arndell said suspect Fernando Aguero, 47, did not comply with Nevada law requiring him to register as a sex offender and kept his past from 8-year-old Lydia Bethany-Rose Rupp's mother, whom he befriended at church in April. He was convicted in 1985 in Los Angeles for lewd and lascivious behavior with a child under 14 and spent one year in jail, Arndell said. Details of that conviction were not available, he said. Authorities say Aguero, who was...

"Gulag" is the Russian acronym made famous by Alexander Solzhenitsyn to describe the vast network of Soviet slave labor camps in which millions died. It is thus one more sign of the moral degradation of Amnesty International that the pressure group is now calling the U.S. detention facility for Taliban and al Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay "the gulag of our time." At a press conference Wednesday releasing its annual human rights report, William Schultz, the executive director of Amnesty's U.S. branch, called the U.S. a "leading purveyor and practitioner" of torture. He urged foreign governments to investigate and arrest...