FL- Residency restrictions a challenge for police and sex offenders

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11-24-2008 Florida:

In a nondescript office building off Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard in West Palm Beach, about a dozen men gather every Monday evening. There's a 36-year-old machinist, a 59-year-old engineer, a 45-year-old handyman.

Despite their diverse backgrounds, they share a common label: registered sex offender.

Most come to licensed mental health counselor Ben Taylor's weekly 90-minute sessions as part of court-ordered therapy. Nearly all are on probation. They discuss a host of topics, including their crimes, the consequences and techniques to keep from re-offending. More frequently, the talk turns to residency restrictions and how finding a place to live, in many ways, is the harshest part of their punishment.

After months of looking, 47-year-old financial analyst Julian and his wife recently bought a home in Royal Palm Beach. In 2002 he tried to solicit a 14-year-old girl online. It turned out to be a police officer. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years of probation.

"A lot of houses we could afford to buy, but I couldn't live in them because I couldn't get approval [from my probation officer]," he said. "I was sending a sheet of houses every day to my probation officer to see which ones qualified and which ones did not."

Figuring out the hodgepodge of residency restrictions for Florida sex offenders iscomplicated.

For people convicted on or after Oct. 1, 2004, state law prohibits them from living within 1,000 feet of any school, day care center, park or playground. In 2006, Palm Beach County enacted its own law with a stricter 2,500-foot restriction. Fifteen of Palm Beach County's municipalities have their own laws, according to the Sheriff's Office, while the others rely on the state or county laws.

For local law enforcement assigned to keep track of the county's registered sex offenders, it's a challenging task.

"It's very time-consuming," said Detective Larry Wood of the sheriff's Sexual Predator and Offender Tracking Unit.

So haphazard are the restrictions, state Sen. Dave Aronberg, D- Greenacres, tried in the last legislative session to pass a bill creating one standardized, statewide 1,500-foot rule that would have also created a 24-hour child protection zone, banning loitering around schools, parks and libraries.

"[With the current restrictions] you can hang out at the bus stop but you can't be registered at an address near there," Aronberg said.

Aronberg's bill was blocked by legislators from Miami-Dade County who said it would weaken that county's 2,500-foot law, he said. He plans to try again next year.

The myriad municipal regulations resulted in a more dangerous situation, he said, by creating a homeless sex offender population and raising the absconder rate.

Supporting Aronberg's bill is Jill Levenson, a Lynn University Bachelor's, master's & online degrees associate professor of human services who wrote a report to the Legislature on the issue. She said residency restrictions prey upon the public's fear of "stranger danger."

Media coverage of cases like that of John Couey, convicted of the rape and murder of 9-year old Jessica Lunsford in 2005, gives the public the perception that such crimes are not unusual, she said.

"Residency restrictions sound good in theory and are very well-intended, but they don't really address the most common types of situations children are abused in," she said. "Children are much more likely to be sexually abused by someone they know and trust."

By diminishing housing availability, the restrictions contribute to an increase in transience, homelessness and instability, all of which are associated with an increased risk of offending again, Levenson said.

Taylor, the therapist, agrees. He has been working with offenders and predators for 19 years and says the restrictions hurt the wider community.

"When they are pushed out of the community, they often go back to bad behaviors," he said. "These are all feel-good laws that make no rhyme or reason."

Julian, the financial analyst, lived in North Palm Beach at the time of his crime but months after his plea authorities told him he was not welcome. A day care center was one block away.

For three months, he and his wife lived in a hotel. Eventually they bought a home in unincorporated Palm Beach County, which has a 2,500-foot residency ban from any place children congregate, such as bus stops, parks and libraries.

Rising taxes and insurance outpriced the couple so they sold the home and rented in West Palm Beach, which this year enacted a 1,500-foot rule. After six months, Julian found their current Royal Palm Beach home. But he lives in fear his neighbors will discover his secret.

"I have to try and keep everything hidden to keep from being shot down in the street, my house being vandalized or burnt down," he said. At his prior homes, the mailbox repeatedly was vandalized and someone circulated fliers with his name and picture. Now he owns a Doberman professionally trained to protect.

"I just want to live my life and move on. I don't want people to pre-judge me ... You can meet me and talk to me and have one opinion of me, but if you know I'm on the [sex offender] registry beforehand, you're going to have a different opinion of me already. I understand that." ..News Source.. by Missy Diaz can be reached at mdiaz@SunSentinel.com or 561-228-5505.