NH- Wife: My husband isn't a sex offender

6-22-2009 New Hampshire:

'He doesn't touch little kids,' she says

Frank Singleton isn't a sex offender, his wife says.

"He doesn't touch little kids," Elizabeth Kuhns said last week, sitting on her mother's doorstep in Northfield, smoking a cigarette.

In the eyes of the law, however, Singleton is a sex offender who's required to register as one and currently imprisoned for failing to do so.

In 1998, he was convicted of endangering the welfare of a child. Now, as a number of towns have adopted residency restrictions, he's barred from living in certain places that are close to parks and schools - including the Franklin apartment where Kuhns and their three children were living when he became eligible for parole in January.

Because Singleton planned to move there, his parole plan wasn't approved, and he has remained in prison.

The American Civil Liberties Union took up his defense, arguing that the town of Franklin didn't have the authority to enforce its ordinance, but attorney Barbara Keshen dropped Singleton's case earlier this month, citing a "difference of opinion with respect to goals of the litigation."

Kuhns said the difference of opinion is simple.

"All she was doing was using Frankie to try and get this ordinance lifted, because that's her job," Kuhns said. She said Singleton fired Keshen. "She didn't do anything to get him home."

Keshen said Thursday that she couldn't elaborate on her reasons for withdrawing. But she expressed strong opposition to sex offender residency restrictions, which she called "bad public policy."

"There's a growing body of evidence that they don't work," said Keshen, who has a case challenging the legality of Dover's sex offender ordinance awaiting a judge's order in Dover District Court. "They don't protect children, because their general effect is to make life more difficult for sex offenders. . . . It drives sex offenders underground. They don't register. They become harder to supervise."

And the restrictions include "no assessment of an individual's current dangerousness," she said. "These ordinances apply to intractable pedophiles, but also to a 17-year-old boy that had sex with his 14-year-old girlfriend 20 years ago."

Or, in Singleton's case, a 27-year-old man convicted of endangering the welfare of a 14-year-old girl, whom Kuhns said he met at a Manchester nightclub about 11 years ago.

Kuhns said Singleton told her it happened like this: "He met a girl with a fake ID. They spent the night together. She made him breakfast. He brought her home. She looked to be about 23."

Kuhns said Singleton told her the girl's parents reported the incident.

He pleaded guilty in 1998 to endangering the welfare of a child "by soliciting her to engage in sexual penetration with him," according to the complaint by the Hillsborough county attorney.

When Singleton, who is now 39, pleaded guilty, prosecutors offered him two choices: spend time in prison or agree to register "for endangering the welfare of a child," Kuhns said. He didn't understand that meant registering as a sex offender, she said, and "he says to this day, if he had known it, he never would have done it."

County court records don't explain anything about a plea agreement, but they show that in September 1998, Singleton received a 2- to 4-year sentence in state prison, suspended under condition of good behavior. He was put on probation for two years.

However, he was charged with violating the terms of that probation after his parole officer reported Singleton had twice tested positive for marijuana and had been arrested for allegedly driving without a valid license. In 2000, he was sentenced to 60 days in the county jail, to be served on consecutive weekends. His probation was also extended.

Keshen said she doesn't believe Singleton and Kuhns are legally married, though Kuhns, who is 25, calls herself his wife and says she's been with Singleton for 6½ years. Singleton talks to their children - ages 3, 1 and 6 months - on the phone every day, Kuhns said, and she brings them to visit him "as much as possible."

She's frustrated he hasn't come home yet. Singleton has been in prison since last May, serving simultaneous sentences for failing to register as a sex offender.

After his parole plan was denied earlier this year because of the Franklin apartment - which Kuhns said she thought was far enough away from the Franklin High School building, but it apparently fell within 2,500 feet of the school zone - Singleton was written up several times for disciplinary issues. His next parole hearing isn't scheduled until September, according to Jeff Lyons, a prison spokesman.

Kuhns is hopeful Singleton can get another hearing sooner, and she's dismissive of the infractions he supposedly committed. Singleton has had trouble in prison since newspaper accounts came out several months ago labeling him a sex offender, she said.

She moved out of the Franklin apartment last week, she said, and wants to find an apartment, maybe in Concord, which doesn't have residency restrictions. (Franklin, Tilton, Northfield and Boscawen all have sex offender ordinances.)

"I'm hoping if I get a place we can be, everything will turn around," she said. "We're going to be a regular family."

The children don't understand where their father is - in front of them, Kuhns spells it out: "P-R-I-S-O-N" - and they ask about him frequently, Kuhns said.

"These kids," she said, "just want their dad."

Three-year-old Isaiah, who had been playing outside, stopped. "Mom, you sound like you're crying," he said.

"I'm fine," Kuhns replied. ..Source.. by MADDIE HANNA, Monitor staff