OH- Student’s multimedia project takes

6-11-2008 Ohio:

When Ohio University graduate student Kim Walker decided to spend a month at The Palace, her camera lens did not capture any royal pampering. Sex offenders generally don’t get that kind of treatment.

The St. Petersburg, Fla., trailer park is home to about 100 residents, all convicted sex offenders, and all legally required to attend therapy classes. Walker sat in on some of those sessions, researching her graduate project. The end result gave the residents a voice.

Saturday night in OU’s Baker Center, Walker presented a 20-minute multimedia presentation of her time at The Palace, including photos, video and interviews. Interviewees included two professionals helping to rehabilitate Palace residents, and four men who volunteered to tell their stories of crime and punishment.

FLORIDA’S STRICT LAWS for convicted sex offenders make it difficult for them to find a place to live after being released from prison. A state law bars convicted sex offenders from any residence within 1,000 feet of a school, bus stop, church, park or any other child’s gathering place.

Walker said some of Florida’s cities have even tougher laws for sex offenders, such as Miami where sex offenders live under a bridge — though homelessness is technically illegal there.

Her inspiration for the Palace trip came from a CNN story on the Miami story. The story of the criminal does not always get told, Walker said.

Walker started her film with a man arrested after exposing his genitals through a Web camera to someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl. It turned out instead to be a police officer.

While he tells his story, Walker mixes in pictures of a man playing with his children and trying to be as much of a father as he legally can. He cannot work because of the legal restrictions, and spends his days traveling to his wife’s house to spend time with his two children.

That first man interviewed accepts responsibility for his crime, though he says he was drunker than he should have been when the crime was committed. But the other interviewees might raise credibility issues with some viewers.

“I really just tried to keep an open mind,” said Walker, who will finish her master’s degree in visual communications when she turns in her project. “I don’t know if they’re lying.”

WALKER SAID HER goal was neutrality, but was aiming more to produce a portrait than journalism. She said she wanted to let the men tell their stories, and did no background research on their stories to establish their guilt or innocence.

She stayed with the trailer park director, Nancy Morais, a sexual assault victim and the mother of a son who was convicted of a sex offense. Morais said in the film that she believes sex offenders can be better rehabilitated and become more functional in society.

Walker said she wants to put the film on a unique Web site, but does not know when that will happen, as she is starting an internship this summer. She has some other projects posted on her Web site kimwalkerphoto.com. ..News Source.. by Corey Ryan, Athens NEWS Campus Reporter