FL- Tougher laws leave sex offenders with no options

4-19-2009 Florida:

Here's where most respectable people want convicted sex offenders to live: Anywhere but near them.

Here's where sex offenders are allowed to live, after a wave of get-tough residency restrictions imposed by South Florida localities: Almost nowhere.

And here's where George Horne has lived most of the last six months since being released from prison: Beneath a roadway overpass, overlooking a canal, surrounded by broken glass and forced to sleep with a stick to beat back rats.

Sex offenders don't usually evoke much sympathy, but is this really what we want in a civilized society?

"I'm living like an animal," Horne, 46, said last week. "I had it much better in prison."

I first met Horne in December, when he showed off the mattress he fashioned from a piece of Styrofoam that fell off a truck.

I found him again last week, after he was evicted from a flop house for sex offenders in the unincorporated Broadview Park neighborhood.

Following the lead of other cities and counties, Broward County Click here for restaurant inspection reports commissioners last week enacted tougher restrictions for unincorporated areas. Sex offenders won't be able to live within 2,500 feet of schools, parks, playgrounds or school bus stops. Current resident offenders might be grandfathered in.

Horne, who spent eight years behind bars for a sexual battery on his girlfriend's young daughter he says he didn't commit, is caught in the crossfire.

Longtime Broadview Park residents watched in horror in recent months as the number of sex offenders grew from a few dozen to more than 100. The neighborhood is bordered by State Road 7, Interstate 595 and Florida's Turnpike.

"We don't want this to become Pervert Park," said Lee Charbonneau, who's lived there 10 years.

She told me her story: One night earlier this year, her dog began barking when a Lee County sheriff's cruiser pulled up in her driveway. The deputy wanted to drop off a sex offender who'd been released from jail.

"He had the wrong address," Charbonneau said.

That's how she discovered a haven for sex offenders had sprouted on her block. An enterprising offender from Orlando, Randy Young, bought a foreclosed home. Soon there were 14 people living there.

Young set up other houses in the neighborhood, including a five-bedroom house that crammed in 25 offenders. According to one offender, they each paid $500 a month. After code enforcement became involved, only five offenders live there.

Horne spent six weeks at that house but was evicted last week.

Horne said he was steered to the overpass by his probation officer after his Nov. 1 release. A spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections said probation officers try to assist in finding housing, but there's often no place for offenders to go. "It's a very difficult situation," said Gretl Plessinger.

With more like Horne on the horizon, Broward might soon have its own Bridge of Shame, like the Julia Tuttle Causeway in Miami-Dade, where nearly 60 sex offenders have set up camp.

How this makes us safer, with more desperate people poised to do desperate things, I have no idea.

"It puts the community at great risk," said Lori Butts, a Davie-based psychologist who counsels sex offenders. She said it's time to rethink the Draconian residency restrictions, saying they are counterproductive and give the people a false sense of security, since unsupervised offenders can roam freely during the day.

"It's not about being sympathetic to sex offenders. It's about doing what's best for the community," Butts said.

Broward County Commissioner John Rodstrom said the county is exploring allowing halfway houses in industrial areas.

There has to be a reasonable medium between offenders descending on certain neighborhoods, living 25 to a single-family home, and living beneath bridges like animals. ..News Source.. by Michael Mayo