Tragically, Megan’S Law Is Needed
Last week in Cincinnati, nearly 4,000 mourners paid their respects at a public visitation service for Mary Jennifer Love. Strangers cried as they processed past the white casket strewn with pink and white flowers.
She was 6 years old. Her pastor called her “a precious little girl who always had a smile and a hug.” She trusted people.
A neighbor in her Colerain Township apartment complex, Ralph Lynch, 48, has been charged with rape and murder in her strangulation death.
Two days earlier, in Santa Rosa, Calif., the body of Michael Patton was found dangling from a redwood tree, a suspected suicide. The Santa Rosa Police Department had leafletted the community with fliers bearing the convicted sex offender’s photo and rap sheet. Police said the suicide had nothing to do with their rigorous enforcement of Megan’s Law; neighbors suspected it did. “I see no problem with them giving out fliers and I see no problem with that guy being dead,” said neighbor John Lewis.
The deaths forced me to confront my profound ambivalence about Megan’s Law, which requires the name and address of convicted sex offenders to be open to the public.
It’s probably unconstitutional and could invite vigilantism. Yet, if a convicted sex offender moved in across the street, I would want to know.
You can get an updated list of area sex offenders at the Montgomery County (Ohio) Jail. Just walk in the main entrance, turn left and go to the first window on your right, and it’s all there: names, addresses, ZIP Codes.
That’s what I decided to do after reading about Mary Love. About how she loved pizza and dolls and skating and taking part in the Eager Beavers program for children 2 to 6 at her church.
About how Lynch allegedly raped her after she was dead and dumped her body in the woods. Police said she died June 24. Lynch led them to her body nine days later.
I went up to the window at the jail and asked for the registry of convicted sex offenders. After filling out a request form, I was handed the list of the 91 men and women in Montgomery County currently registered as sexually oriented offenders or sexual predators.
I looked for my ZIP Code and counted nine sexually oriented offenders and one sexual predator, although none in my immediate neighborhood. Another sexual predator lived a few blocks away from the shopping center where I frequently shop with my kids.
If Mary Love’s parents had requested the same information, might it have saved her? No. Lynch wasn’t registered as a sex offender, even though he was convicted in 1991 of exposing himself to a 9-year-old girl. Ohio’s law isn’t retroactive and Lynch wasn’t sentenced more because the victims in the ‘91 crime were unwilling to testify, according to Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters.
Mary Love’s death may not be a textbook-case argument for Megan’s Law, but it’s a potent reminder that danger can live next door. And it is a textbook example of why sex crimes against children are so difficult to prosecute - and why the public feels such rage and frustration that such criminals are free to commit their crimes “over and over again,” Deters said.
“These are the most horrible of cases and the most difficult of cases because of the tender age of the witnesses,” he added. “When we handle a rape case involving a child, more times than not the parent comes to you begging you to plea bargain.” Deters isn’t inclined to plea bargain, but the reluctance of victims’ families makes his job a lot tougher.
Deters doesn’t have a problem with Megan’s Law - he believes child molesters forfeit certain rights - but he doesn’t think it’s effective: “We’re fooling ourselves if we believe that’s the answer. In some instances it’s helpful, but if a pedophile is reported in a particular neighborhood, he’ll go to another neighborhood and abuse a child.
“Because this disorder is incurable and the recidivism rate is through the roof, when someone is convicted of raping a child, they should be locked up for life.”
You can hear the pain in Deters’ voice when he talks about Mary Love. He has a 4-year-old daughter named Mary. “You hold your kids close, to know there’s a monster like that out there.”
We hold our civil liberties dear.
We hold our children dear.
How do you weigh the civil liberties of criminals who prey upon children versus a child’s right to ride a bicycle down the street or step outside the door of an apartment? Is the law simply putting children first, where they belong? Or are we deluding ourselves with the notion that anybody’s constitutional rights come with an asterisk?
Those are the wrenching questions raised by Ohio’s community notification law, passed one year ago this month. Modeled on New Jersey’s Megan’s law, the law requires all convicted sex offenders to register with authorities and mandates that the community be warned about sexual predators, offenders deemed likely to act again.
It’s impossible to say how many children have been protected by the law. It’s easier to point to the potential for abuse: In Linden, N.J., Jimmy Johnson, 23, fired five shots into the home of a paroled sex offender. Johnson’s mother said her son “realized the rapist lives in our back yard. Me and his baby sister, he feels he’s the protector …. He didn’t do it to try to harm anyone. It was to scare the rapist to move.”
I can’t put myself in Johnson’s shoes. I can’t imagine firing shots into a stranger’s home. But I understand why it makes people crazy that anyone who rapes a child is ever set free to do it again. I feel that way, too.
My head tells me that Megan’s Law is not the answer - that it violates civil liberties without assuring children’s protection.
Yet I already know by heart the names of the convicted sex offenders living in my ZIP Code. And I’m glad I know where they live.