Caring adults best defense for kids

Joseph Edward Duncan III’s story terrorizes the Pacific Northwest.

Here you have a person with a history of sexual violence who worked the system and sympathetic individuals until he was in a position to take flight from another state’s registration requirements for sex offenders. Now he stands accused of the murders and/or kidnap of the members of a Coeur d’Alene area family. But for bad judgment on his part in stopping at the Coeur d’Alene Denny’s restaurant, he might still be out there somewhere stalking and brutalizing people.

The name of Patrick Stearns isn’t as frightening as Duncan’s. But it should be. In an investigative story for the Seattle Times, reporter Christine Willmsen explained how Stearns ingratiated himself to a couple in Everett as a graphic designer in need of a place to stay while he looked for work. In reality, he had been convicted twice for molesting children and once for showing child pornography to a young girl. He was a registered sex offender who’d told police he was homeless. Stearns was sent to prison, according to the Times, after the Everett couple learned he’d shown pornography to their 6-year-old daughter.

Unfortunately, Washington residents are more in danger from sex offenders who are homeless or say they are than from the random crimes of violent predators like Duncan. A weakness in state law allows homeless sex offenders to escape scrutiny because Washington law enforcement doesn’t have the personnel to keep track of offenders with unknown addresses. The growing problem of homeless sex offenders doesn’t have an inexpensive solution.

State Rep. Al O’Brien, D-Mountlake Terrace, chairman of the House Criminal Justice and Corrections Committee, estimates that a proposal of his to provide ankle monitors for homeless sex offenders has a startup cost figure of $10 million, according to the Times. Also, O’Brien wants to stiffen penalties to strike fear into offenders who routinely fail to register, knowing they’ll only spend 30 to 60 days in jail if they’re caught. The Times reports that O’Brien wants to penalize first offenders with 60 days in jail and second offenders with a year in jail. The price tag? About $12 million a year.

Washington should be able to afford those two necessary expenses because a strong economy has pumped $1.4 billion into its reserve. But advocates for stronger penalties and monitoring of sex offenders will vie with every other state legislator who will want his or her share of that pot of gold for pet projects.

However, the best monitors for children are concerned grownups who take precautions to ensure their safety.

In the case involving homeless offender Stearns, the parents put their little girl in harm’s way by inviting a stranger to stay in their home without checking his background. Much sexual abuse of children occurs when a single parent invites a lover with a dark background into a home with children. Law enforcement and the judicial system can do only so much to protect children from this modern epidemic, no matter how well-funded. Caring adults are the first line of defense.