East Moline man remains a sex offender after bill is defeated

3-6-2011 Illinois:

___ is a registered sex offender, but it's because when he was 17, his fiancée at the time was 16-years-old and pregnant with their now 7-year-old daughter.

__, his wife, and their two young sons were hopeful a new bill introduced to the Illinois House would allow him to shed the sex offender tag. But the House defeated the bill known as the "Romeo and Juliet” bill on Thursday leaving the family in the unknown.

"I'm a little nervous both for myself and my family," ____ said.

What makes him nervous is House Bill 1628 which prohibits sex offenders from living near child counseling centers.

"If they don't make it specific to what a counseling center could be, it could be just about anything they decide and if that bill gets passed, my family will be moving to Missouri to live with [her] parents and I'll possibly be forced to live out of my car."

"I want us to stay together because that's what we are,” she said. “We stay together because we're a family."

The “Romeo and Juliet” bill needed 60 yes's to pass. It only received 36. With that number, ___ wonders if the politicians just didn't want their name next to a bill to free sex offenders.

"I'm sure a lot of them sit there and think ‘well, if we vote for this bill when next election season comes up, our opponent will throw that back and us that they're letting rapists and murderers and everything else on the street’ and that's not the case."

Even with the most recent bill falling through, ___ still remains hopeful he'll one day be removed from the registry.

"All I can do is take each day as it comes and hopefully, someday, I'll be taken off the registry or the state will realize what they're doing is wrong and they'll change the laws,” ____ said. “Until then, we just keep doing what we're doing." ..Source.. Steve Campbell