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October 26, 2004
Better action needed against sexual predators
ALBANY DRAGS FEET
BY LAURA A. AHEARN
Laura A. Ahearn is the author of "Megan’s Law Nationwide," and is the executive director of Parents for Megan’s Law, which provides counseling, prevention education and victim assistance.
The recent sexual attack on a 14-year-old girl by a paroled homeless sex offender, residing at the Brook Motel in North Babylon, has terrified parents clamoring for answers from town and county government. But they're not going to find all of their answers there because they need to look to Albany.
At the time of the attack, the alleged offender, William Morgan, was homeless and was being housed by the Suffolk County Department of Social Services along with a number of other homeless sex offenders. While it was, at the very least, shortsighted for Social Services to place multiple homeless sex offenders in a motel in a residential area, it was downright wrong for the state Division of Parole, responsible for the daily monitoring of violent offenders like Morgan, to have approved of these placements.
And it was also tragic that, because Albany lawmakers can't agree on appropriating funds and passing legislation to confine sexual predators to civil commitment treatment facilities, sexually violent offenders like Morgan continue to prey upon our communities across the state.
Morgan, by the state's own classification system, is designated as having a high risk of re-offending, as being a sexually violent offender and a predicate sex offender. In this case, that means he has a history of committing other sexually violent offenses in addition to the offenses that required his registration under Megan's Law. At 44, Morgan has been sentenced to 22 years in prison but has served only 14 of them for committing sex crimes against our most vulnerable.
Instead of funneling the necessary resources to incarcerate offenders longer, provide stricter supervision, fund treatment research, build civil commitment facilities, improve upon registration and notification systems, and educate the public about child sexual-abuse prevention, Albany lawmakers have been content with a Megan's Law less effective than those in most other states. As a result, they have left defenseless communities to cope somehow with the presence of the most high-risk sex offender - the sexual predator.
Most child sexual abuse, up to 90 percent, involves someone with whom a child has an established and trusting relationship. Through up-to-date prevention education programs, parents and children can learn skills to stay safe from most types of sex offenders. But there is very little that community members can do to protect themselves from the sexual predator.
It is this sub-class of sex offender that has prompted the passage of sex-offender civil commitment laws in other parts of the nation - laws authorizing the confinement in treatment facilities of highly dangerous sexual predators following completion of their criminal sentences and until they are determined to no longer pose a risk to public safety.
The first sexual predator civil commitment law was part of a larger comprehensive program designed to manage sexual predators in the state of Washington and was in response to high-profile sexual predator cases. In one case, two years after his release from prison, a 40-year-old sexual predator with a long history of assaults on children raped, stabbed and mutilated a 7-year-old boy, and left him for dead. This law and other civil commitment laws across the country identify a certain sub-class of sex offender as sexually violent predators to describe those who are eligible for civil commitment to treatment facilities immediately after they serve their prison terms. Currently, 20 states and the District of Columbia have sex offender civil commitment laws in place.
Besides keeping sexual predators off the streets and providing necessary supervision and treatment to sex offenders, the civil commitment process will also offer assurances to community members that, if one of New York's 18,000 convicted sex offenders moves into their neighborhood, it won't be a predator still considered a great risk - providing, at least, some peace of mind.
Tragically, for years, partisan politics have prevented Albany lawmakers from getting serious enough to appropriate funding and pass civil commitment legislation. Let's be proactive and take preventive measures to protect children, instead of waiting for a child to die at the hands of a sexual predator before a law is put into place.
Posted by Nealus at October 26, 2004 12:03 PM
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