FL- Man who helped change sex offender laws says he 'made Florida safer'

8-2-2009 Florida:

In 2000, Ron Book discovered that the nanny he employed was sexually molesting his daughter, Lauren, 16.

The woman was arrested and sentenced to prison. But Book, an influential lobbyist formerly of Miami-Dade now living in Broward, didn't stop there.

He helped pass an extension of the Florida statute of limitations for sex offenses against minors, tougher penalties for sex offenders misusing the Internet, enhanced state-funded treatment for victims, and more.

In what has become his most controversial initiative, he set out to persuade dozens of counties and municipalities - including in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast—to sharply restrict where sex offenders can live.

Today, many cities have buffer zones forcing sex offenders to live at least 2,500 feet from schools, parks, day care centers and school bus stops. Critics - including officials in law enforcement and corrections circles — say the new laws have left some offenders homeless and harder to track, but Book stands by his efforts.

"I sleep well at night knowing I have made Florida safer," he says.

Meanwhile in 2000, Dick Witherow of Lake Worth, a former private detective turned pastor, who preached to substance abusers and former convicts, began ministering to sex offenders.

He also had personal motivation. In 1953, at age 19 , he was arrested for impregnating his girlfriend, then 15. Facing a possible sentence of five years for statutory rape, he asked the judge for permission to marry instead. The judge agreed, Witherow avoided prison, and the couple were married for 25 years before her death in 1979.

That story is contained in his book, "The Modern Day Leper," which argues that today sex offenders are treated the way lepers were in Biblical times - as if any contact with the public is dangerous. He says in his own case, he would have been banished to prison instead of being given a chance to make a family and a productive life.

Witherow hastens to separate most offenders from sexual predators who commit violent crimes against children, like John Couey who raped and murdered Jessica Lunsford, 9, in Citrus County in 2005, helping provoke the expansion in buffer zones.Witherow says only about 1 percent of offenders are predators.

"Most of these men are regular people who made a mistake," he says. "They aren't guilty of horrible crimes. The idea should be to help them make a successful transition back to society. Treating them like monsters isn't the answer."

He says he has found that many offenders had drug and alcohol problems that led to their sex offenses and he helps treat those addictions.

Witherow also says the buffer zones are a pointless product of public hysteria.

"The living restrictions are useless and do nothing to protect children," he says. " In an overwhelming number of cases, it isn't strangers who commit these offenses, but people the children know well. Look at the case of the nanny, right in this man's home."

In his book, Witherow quotes a Congressman who stated that 100 percent of sex offenders repeat their offense. Ironically, the politician is former U.S Rep. Mark Foley, R-West Palm Beach, who was driven from office after sending sexually suggestive messages to male pages in Congress.

"The truth is sexual offenders have a very low recidivism rate, less than 5 percent," Witherow says. "Ninety-five percent of sex crimes against minors are committed by new offenders and the living restrictions don't do anything to stop that."

Today, Witherow's Matthew 25 Ministries runs a program in Pahokee - Miracle Park - where some 30 sex offenders live. He ran a similar facility in Okeechobee County from 2000-2003, until local officials enforced zoning restrictions that drove him out.

The offenders share the 104-unit Pahokee complex with non-offenders, largely retired sugar workers. When Matthew 25 arrived in December several families with children moved out. The Palm Beach County Office of Equal Opportunity is investigating to determime whether the families were forced out, something Witherow denies.

Now Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office is saying the facility is too close to a baseball diamond and wants the offenders out. Witherow says the diamond hasn't been used in years. He calls it "more harrassment" of sex offenders who are trying to remake their lives.

The program for the offenders combines religious instruction with state mandated counseling, and lessons on substance abuse, finance and anger management.

Witherow says since 2000 he has counseled somewhere near 100 sex offenders and not one of them has been arrested again for a sexual offense.

"The real danger for parents isn't these sexual offenders," he says. "It is that your own child will be turned into a sex offender by what he's finding on a computer right in your home."

Book disagrees strongly with Witherow and stands by the buffer zones, although recent events in Miami-Dade have made him rethink the size of those zones.

Apart from being a lobbyist, Book is chairman of the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust. The expanded zones have left dozens of men unable to find a legal residence and they live under a bridge in Biscayne Bay.

Book, who championed the zones, is now, ironically, having to help the men find places to live. Last week he placed at least eight of them in a rental complex. He says he now believes that slightly smaller buffer zones would open housing - 1,750 to 2,250 feet, instead of 2,500 feet.

He also says that he supports a system that distinguishes between more serious offenders and others, and "a judicial review where some people can come off the list of offenders" and no longer be affected by the living restrictions.

Witherow, the former offender, approves.

"He's beginning to see," he says. "He's someone who trusted a nanny and he's been looking at every sex offender as if it was that nanny."

But Book and Witherow will probably never see eye to eye on the offenders. Witherow showers God's love on them. Not Book.

"I go under that bridge to see them," says Book. "I'm trying to see that they are not homeless, but that doesn't mean I have to like them." ..Source.. by JOHN LANTIGUA, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer