NC- Church among activities off limits to sex offenders

5-12-2009 North Carolina:

RALEIGH – If they want to repent their sins, sex offenders in Buncombe County and elsewhere had better do it at home.

Some church services are among the activities that are off limits because of tough restrictions on registered sex offenders' movements, passed all but unanimously last year by state lawmakers who invoked a young girl's tragic murder.

This week, though, the General Assembly will likely start to rethink a ban that keeps sex offenders from going within 300 feet of a place “intended primarily for the use, care or supervision of minors.”

Questions have come up about whether this rule applies to a church with a nursery, a hospital with a pediatrics unit, a store like Wal-Mart with a toy aisle or an eatery like McDonald's with a play area, Rep. Rick Glazier said.


“I think there's increasingly an argument that a lot of what we did is unconstitutional,” said Glazier, a Fayetteville Democrat.

The process of undoing it could start as soon as today. Glazier, along with Rep. Bruce Goforth, an Asheville Democrat, and others, have introduced a bill proposing a number of changes in sex-offender laws. Most of them will be put on hold for now, Glazier said, but they will try to move ahead with changes in the 300-foot rule.

Legislators will try to meet a deadline of Thursday for a vote in the House, making a committee vote today likely.

Arrested for churchgoing
The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina has received two reports of men being arrested for going to church, said Sarah Preston, a lobbyist for the group.

Another man complained he couldn't go to the library, Preston said. Unemployed, he wanted to use the library for job hunting, but it had a children's section.

More than 270 sex offenders live in Buncombe County, where sheriff's Lt. Ross Dillingham said 10-12 churches have called the sheriff's office about the law.

Sex offenders cannot attend North Asheville Baptist Church services when they're held at North Buncombe High School, Dillingham said. They're banned from school property.

The law is tough for sheriffs to interpret because there have been no court rulings in the state, Transylvania County Sheriff David Mahoney said. In Georgia this year, a federal judge blocked a similar state law.

“I suppose that if we were to receive a complaint … I think we would have to just really go by the letter of the law,” Mahoney said. “If that means it's at McDonald's, then so be it.”

Unintended consequence
Goforth, among the most vocal advocates in the legislature for sex-offender restrictions, said the far-reaching ban was an unintended consequence.

“We want them in church to try to turn their lives toward Christ,” Goforth said, so “they would no longer prey on society.”

Known as Jessica's Law, a set of restrictions that took effect in December was named in honor of a 9-year-old who was kidnapped, raped and buried alive by a registered sex offender in 2005 after moving to Florida from Gaston County.

The law was sponsored by Rep. Julia Howard, a Mocksville Republican who is now among the legislators pushing for a change. The law's other main backers were also Republicans, including then-Rep. Charles Thomas of Arden.

It set a number of restrictions that are not being considered for rollback, notably a mandate of at least 25 years in prison and lifetime electronic monitoring for raping a child.

Grier Weeks, director of the National Association to Protect Children, said the debate highlights the fact that such laws are ineffective because they can't be enforced.

The most serious offenders should be in prison or on probation, where they can be monitored, Weeks said.

“If somebody is sexually dangerous to children, you absolutely want to keep them from going where children congregate,” he said, “but the only effective way to do that is to have teeth in it.”

Other sex offender bills

Even as they rethink some restrictions on sex offenders, legislators are moving to add more. Bills moving through the legislature would:

• Require school employees convicted of taking indecent liberties with a student to register as a sex offender. Introduced by Rep. Bruce Goforth, D-Buncombe.

• Keep registered sex offenders off juries.

• Keep offenders from driving buses with children on them.

• Keep them from being EMS personnel. Authored by Rep. Carolyn Justus, R-Henderson, the bill passed the House unanimously last week. ..News Source.. by Jordan Schrader