Dequita Robinson was shocked when her neighbor told her three convicted sex offenders were living in her neighborhood.
“I had no idea that these monsters were around us,” Dequita Robinson wrote in a letter to the Post. Why, she asked, had no one “notified (her) about these villains.”
Her neighbor found out by checking North Carolina’s sex offender registry at the state’s Web site,
sbi.jus.state.nc.us .
Turns out that 92 registered sex offenders live in Rowan County.
Robinson, 21, wants to protect her 3-year-old daughter, Demeria, and inform her neighbors and other Rowan County citizens that convicted sex offenders could be as close as next door.
“Shouldn’t someone come around and tell you or something?” Robinson asks.
“I fear for my daughter and other children on this block,” she wrote.
In front of her home, she points to other houses, “They just moved here and they have kids,” she says.
“They just moved here too,” she said, pointing to another, “and they don’t have kids, but they may have grandkids, you just never know.”
Robinson said there is little traffic on her road, and many children are able to play in front of their homes in the street.
“As soon as they get done breakfast, you know, it’s out the door to play,” she said.
And older children get off the school bus in the afternoons and walk home, usually to an empty house.
Statistics show that 52 percent of offenders, when not held accountable, victimize again, and that the “typical” sex offender molests an average of 117 children, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
One of the federal laws that helped establish the required sex offender registry stemmed from the brutal murder and rape of 7-year-old Megan Kanka.
Kanka’s attacker was a twice-convicted sex offender.
Now that Robinson knows the sex offenders live near her, she has few answers about what to do to protect her daughter.
“My parents talked about keeping her for awhile at their house in Texas, not just because of this, but after finding this out, it is a good reason for her to stay there,” Robinson said.
Rowan County Sheriff’s Detective John Knight is responsible for registering all sex offenders in the county as they come from prison or the court system.
Offenders have 10 days to register, either after serving prison time or immediately after a conviction, if they serve no time.
If prison or jail time is issued, the offender’s probation officer initiates the registration.
Once released, the State Bureau of Investigation’s Division of Criminal Information sends the Sheriff’s Department a notice that the offender has been released to the specified county.
After an offender registers, Knight said, the offender’s address is verified yearly via a certified letter delivered to the given address.
“Once a year, a letter, non-forwardable, is sent to the address provided. The letter has to be signed and returned to this office within 10 days,” Knight said.
“They make three attempts (to deliver the letter), then I start looking for this person and find out what happened,” Knight said.
Those required to register include anyone convicted of a specified sex crime after Jan. 1, 1996, and anyone released from a probationary sentence or an active sentence after that date.
Failure to register an accurate address results in a criminal charge.
Lacy Williams, 25, is currently serving a two-year prison sentence for failing to register in Rowan County as a sex offender.
Williams, convicted of five counts of indecent liberties with a child, was extradited from Philadelphia and convicted of filing a false address while living in North Carolina.
Each county is responsible for updating the information for the Web site which is sponsored by the State Bureau of Investigation. Knight goes to great lengths to keep the Web site up to date with accurate information.
Compared to other counties, where some of the offender information is incomplete, Knight has tracked all 92 offenders’ addresses and only one of those doesn’t have a picture available.
Knight said a federal grant made it possible for all counties to acquire digital cameras. “That way, we can have some uniformity to the pictures,” Knight said.
“When they register or have a noticeable change of appearance, or anytime they come from another county,” Knight says he updates the offender’s picture.
Browsers on the State Bureau of Investigation Web site can click on a camera icon to view a small version of the offender’s picture or click on the name for a large version accompanied by detailed information.
In addition to an address and picture, the Web site provides the offender’s known aliases, birth date, detailed description of tattoos and scars, height, weight, eye and hair color along with convictions and sentences imposed.
Offenders must be registered for 10 years and that begins once registration is filed and it is estimated that 98 percent of North Carolina’s offenders are registered.
Knight also pointed out that real estate agents are required to tell potential buyers if sex offenders are in the area.
How fair is the law?
Is it fair for a sex offenders to be treated differently than other criminals such as murderers, one sex offender asks.
He asks to be anonymous and only talks briefly about his conviction.
“It was three and a half years ago,” the man in his 30s says. The incident involved a family member and the man said there were “other circumstances surrounding it.”
“The Lord knows what happened and that is all that matters. I don’t need to be judged by others. I have paid my debt to society and it should be done with now.”
A number of attempts were made to contact other sex offenders registered in Rowan County. For those who could be located, they were reluctant to talk and declined comment.
“In some states there have been acts of vigilantism against the offender or against other people in the home because they don’t know who the sex offender is,” North Carolina’s American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Deborah Ross said. “That hurts innocent people.”
Ross was unsure of specific incidents in Rowan County.
“Two bad things happen for society through sex offender registry,” Ross said.
“First, when they don’t want to register it kind of pushes them under ground and it makes them more violent. And that gives a false sense of security of who the people are that you should be aware of. It also keeps them from reintegrating the community and society.
“Psychological factors are they feel separated from society and this makes them feel more, kind of, isolated and unable to experience normal human interaction,” Ross said.
“Not everyone who is a sex offender is a serial offender,” she said.
Ross cites an instance where a man, right at legal age, may have a consensual sexual relationship with an underage girl.
But when the relationship is reported by a disgruntled family member or an angry ex-girlfriend, the man faces being convicted of a sex offense.
“There are some weird things in our laws that make people sex offenders, including statutory rape situations, where it might be consensual, but because of the age it is a crime,” she said,
“People have the false impression that all sex offenders do it again and do it on repeated occasions, while the majority of sex offenders involves people within families,” she said.
She points out that that doesn’t make the crime any less significant but does differentiate it from a random act of violence or a serial sex offender.
Another point Ross makes is that by exposing the offender, in turn the victim is exposed.
“When people find out the person’s a sex offender that compromises the victims,” Ross said.
“In every sexual assault, every step is taken to protect the identity of the victim,” Ross said.
But when the public Web site lists someone as being charged with incest or sexual assault by a substitute parent, the victim is generally easy to identify.
Only 23 states have Internet Web sites available for the public to check on sex offender information. The rest of the states either have limited or no public information available.
“Some sex offender laws have been ruled unconstitutional. Right now there are no legal challenges to it (in North Carolina),” she said.
Megan’s Law
President Clinton adopted Megan’s Law on May 17, 1996 after the rape and murder of a 7-year-old New Jersey girl named Megan Kanka.
Megan’s parents didn’t know their neighbor was convicted twice of sex offense until their daughter became a victim.
North Carolina adopted the Amy Jackson law to require additional mandates for registered sex offenders.
District Attorney Bill Kenerly agrees with the sex offender registry.
“I certainly believe that the public has a right to know what the history of these people are and where they live,” he said.
Kenerly points out though, that the charges in the registry may be less severe than the original charge, simply because of plea bargains.
“Because we go through jury trials in these things so frequently, we enter pleas so there is some punishment and registration is required,” Kenerly said.
Éxperience has shown the district attorney’s office that getting a conviction is very difficult for sex crimes, which generally have no physical evidence and boil down to a “he-said, she-said” trial.
“It’s just hard to prove,” Kenerly said.
In early October, Assistant District Attorney Karen Bier nacki tried a case in Rowan County Superior court. After a week-long trial, the jury came back deadlocked. Because jurors were unable to reach a common verdict, the case will have to be tried again.
“When the person accused is 30 and victim is 14 or 15 and the crime may be a felony for prison time for 30 years,” Kenerly said.“Juries sometimes, with punishment that severe and the age so close, juries don’t return a guilty verdict.”
And with no guilty verdict, there is no conviction, no active time and no registration.
According to the parentsformeganslaw.com
Web site “offenders unable to take responsibility for their actions” have reoffending rates of 52 percent.
And a study done by the National Institute of Mental Health indicates the “typical child sex offender molests an average of 117 children, most of who do not report the offense.”
Another reason plea bargains through the district attorney’s office help obtain a conviction — 79 percent of children victims initially deny the abuse occurred, according to a 1991 study cited by the Megan’s Law Web site.
The Web site also sources a 1988 study that states “young victims may not recognize their victimization as sexual abuse.”
Other counties
Rowan County is in the middle for numbers of registered sex offenders as compared to other nearby counties.
As of Oct.2, there were 92 registered sex offenders in Rowan County.
Cabarrus County has 112 registered sex offenders, Stanly County, 36, Davie County, 25, Davidson County, 98, and Iredell County has 91.
Those numbers can be compared to the 328 registered offenders in Mecklenburg County.
July figures indicate there are 4,666 registered offenders in North Carolina. That is up from 2,200 when the registry went on-line in April 1998.
The Web site also lists registered predators, which the court determines at the time of conviction. Neither Rowan nor any of the surrounding counties had a registered predator.
The real victims
Despite the outcries of convicted sex offenders and their neighbors, the real victims are the juveniles.
Often, children choose not to report crimes against them for fear of being victimized again.
Children fear the reaction of their family, feel guilty for the consequences to the suspect and may feel like a target to the suspect’s retaliation.
In addition, children blame themselves for being victims of sexual abuse and are typically embarrassed and reluctant to describe their role in the sex crime.
The Megan’s Law Web site suggests informing children of “healthy boundaries.”
By telling children that “their music teacher teaches them music but does not take photographs of them” the site suggests it will help children set “healthy boundaries” for deciding what is right and wrong.
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