Things are getting out of hand, first everyone wanted a public registry, now everyone wants PERSONAL NOTIFICATIONS. This request is another form of secondary dissemination which could easily pass on erroneous information, and without the WARNINGS required by the Adam Walsh Act, to protect the RSO. Oh, did Ohio forget about that when it allegedly enacted AWA?1-21-2010 Ohio:
Nursing home staff is already burdened with work and adding another task will unnecessarily drive up costs of nursing homes. This lawmaker needs to get a life and stop with this nonsense, current laws are sufficient, folks need to get off their duffs and find out for themselves.
How about a law -for voters- to tell them -at the polls- about lawmakers like this that waste the time of the legislature. PS: How many of these RSOs in nursing homes NEED the services provided by nursing homes? Oh, lawmaker is silent on that point!
A loophole that allows more than 100 registered sex offenders to live in Ohio nursing homes without other residents and their families knowing about their offenses could be closed with state legislation unveiled today.
Senate Bill 130, sponsored by state Sen. Capri Cafaro, D-Hubbard, would require nursing-home administrators to notify residents, family members and guardians when a Tier III sex offender - the most serious level of offense - intends to move to the facility. The hearing today was the first on the bill.
Current law requires the notification of anybody living within 1,000 feet of a sex offender. However, the law does not require nursing-home administrators to inform residents, family or guardians.
Cafaro told the Senate Judiciary and Criminal Justice Committee that the state's Sex Offender Registration and Notification Law must be strengthened "to better protect our state's most vulnerable residents."
Facilities that don't comply could be fined $100 a day per violation. Proceeds from fines would be used for adult protective services, Cafaro said.
A Dispatch computer analysis last year comparing state records of long-term-care facilities with the existing notification list found that 110 nursing-home residents and six employees were registered sex offenders. Fifty-one were concentrated at four nursing homes, including 26 in one facility in Washington Court House.
Ohio's number of offenders in nursing facilities nearly tripled in the past five years, according to Perfect Cause, an Oklahoma-based nonprofit group. Perfect Cause documented at least 60 murders, rapes and serious assaults nationwide in nursing homes by residents who are sex offenders, including the rape of a mentally retarded woman in Cincinnati.
Nearly two-thirds of the offenders in nursing homes are Tier III cases, The Dispatch found. The category includes rape, sexual battery, kidnapping a minor and gross sexual imposition on a child younger than 12.
Beverley L. Laubert, the state's long-term-care ombudsman, urged state lawmakers to pass a law closing the loophole in a report released late last year.
Some argue that notification is unfair and would create unnecessary fear.
Pete VanRunkle, executive director of the Ohio Health Care Association, representing long-term-care facilities in the state, said previously that while he supports the idea there is no provision in state law that would allow nursing homes to remove or refuse sex offenders.
Attorney General Richard Cordray supports the change, but Sen. Tim Grendell, R-Chesterland, chairman of the committee in which Cafaro's bill is being heard, is skeptical. He said previously that nursing-home residents and their families can "check for themselves" to see whether an offender resides in the facility. ..Source.. Alan Johnson, THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
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