4A THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
SEX CRIMES
THURSDAY, MAY 12, 2005
In a situation like that, I don't consider that to be a sexual offender. I'm more concerned about pedophiles; I'm more concerned about serial rapists, people of that nature."
Rep. Tom Sloan Kansas representative
FFENDERS
The List
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A
CAN THEY BE TRUSTED?
The sex offender registry has gained repeated front-page attention in Lawrence because of the state's plan to release Leroy Hendricks — a 70-year-old repeat child molester — to live in Lawrence after leaving the Larned State Hospital where he was confined for 10 years after he completed his prison sentence.
Hendricks once said his death was the only guarantee that he would stop molesting children.
But he is still alive and could live in Lawrence under 24-hour surveillance. A group of outraged Lawrence parents started a petition to ask that Hendricks be moved elsewhere.
Ironically, if Hendricks comes to Lawrence, his address won't be disc closed because his crimes occurred before 1994, when
the state law mandating the sex offender registry took effect.
But to Stephen McAllister, professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, the inaccuracy of the list detracts from its stated purpose.
Bourgeois and 50 other Lawrence residents won't be as lucky. Their pictures and addresses appear online every day.
many other sex offenders aren't even on the registry, such as those who haven't yet been caught or those who were convicted before 1994 when the law went into effect and don't have to register in Kansas, like Hendricks.
McAllister successfully defended before the U.S. Supreme Court the constitutionality of the Kansas law that kept Hendricks and other dangerous sex offenders locked up in mental hospitals after they had completed their prison sentences. However, he said as a listing of potential offenders the list was woefully incomplete and even failed to keep track of offenders who were on it.
"If they want to move to Utah, it's very hard to keep track of them," McAllister said. "The problem is you have to have accurate information, and that's very hard to do."
Furthermore, McAllister said
ARE THEY ALL SEX
OFFENDERS?
Critics say that a bigger problem with the list is that it combines minor sex offenders with serious ones, which makes the list impractical for deciding who on the list is a threat and who is not.
Bourgeois said that he was an example of an offender who posed no risk to the community.
He was 17 years old when he started dating his 15-year-old girlfriend in Wellsville. Their relationship became illegal under Kansas law when he turned 18. Police searched his car during a traffic stop in Olathe and found letters he had written to his girlfriend that contained sexual references.
"It was a love letter, how I felt about her, what I wanted from our relationship," Bourgeois said. "The sexual reference was brief, offhand and sort of a joke, but it was enough for them to ask her about it."
parents didn't want to press charges, the state booked him for indecent liberties with a child. He pled down to a lesser charge of solicitation. He said he took the deal because he was scared, confused and thought that the plea bargain would make the problem go away sooner.
Even though his girlfriend's
Six years later, Bourgeois is still on the list and still deals with the consequences that accompany it.
Bourgeois said that the KBI
registry doesn't tell people who the real threats are ped o ph i les, rapists and multiple offenders — as opposed to those like him with more minor offenses.
"Call me a jerk, or a felon even, but throwing me in the same category with them?" Bourgeois said.
Another sex offender, on the list,
"Aaron," who agreed to be quoted only if he
name is not used, said
that including minor offenders diluted the purpose of the list.
"By populating the list with people like me, or the 18-year-old who was dating the 15-year-old, the list is perhaps doing an injustice to us while failing to do its purpose to do justice to the rest of society because of its length and basic accuracy deficiencies," he said. "Remember the story of the boy who cried wolf?
"Perhaps a severity grading scale should be assumed for the list. Short of that, leaving those who represent little or no risk to society off the list would seem the best way to handle the situation." he said.
Proponents of the registry said that trying to assess risklevels for offenders was dangerous.
Laura A. Ahearn, executive director of Parents for Megan's Law, which lobbied for passage of the federal law that encourages states to have registries, said she was vehemently opposed to including risk-assessment factors on public
registries. She cited examples of offenders with lesser prior offenses who went on to commit more serious sex crimes. She also said the devastating impact the sex crimes had against the victim were reason enough to track all sex offenders.
"They're now being exposed for who they are," Ahearn said. "Our position is when you've committed a sex crime, you have left a mark on a person's life forever."
Rick Fischli, director of sexual offender management for the Kansas Department of Corrections, said the state could not reasonably assess each offender on a case-by-case basis and determine which ones were a risk to re-offend.
"Separate out what is serious and not so serious is very difficult," Fischli said. "It's really tough to pinpoint on an individual basis to find out who is dangerous and who isn't."
Fischli said that when he worked as a parole officer in the department of corrections, he saw some minor offenders transform into serious offenders. He also said some of the crimes listed on the registry resulted from plea bargains and didn't adequately indicate the severity of their crimes.
"I can tell you that some people who were convicted of indecent solicitation of a child committed power rape of someone who was under 16," Fischli said.
The registry law exists across all 50 states in large part because legislators find that it's a law that makes them look good politically, McAllister said.
Rep. Tom Sloan (R-Lawrence) said he favored keeping the registry to protect communities, but didn't consider a case such as Bourgeois' one that should be on the registry.
But even some politicians question the all-encompassing nature of the law.
"It's a very tough-on-crime position to take," he said.
"In a situation like that, I don't consider that to be a sexual offender," Sloan said. "I'm more concerned about pedophiles; I'm more concerned about serial rapists, people of that nature."
He said, "16-, 17-, 18-year-old boys and girls, they're having sexual relations, and I don't consider that to be a sexual offender situation, certainly not in the case of this list."
Wes Crenshaw, a Lawrence author and psychologist who works primarily with victims and their families, but has also worked with intra-familial sex offenders, agreed that the list was too broad and feared the public wouldn't know how to reasonably consume it.
"Lesser offenders don't deserve to be on that list," Crenshaw said. "It serves to dilute the purpose of that list."
"The problem with that approach is it is all-inclusive,"Crenshaw said. "My worry about it is I don't trust the list to do me any good."
Crenshaw said he never bothered to look at the KBI registry until the emergence of recent media reports about Hendricks, the repeat sex offender moving to Lawrence. Once he checked the list, he discovered that one registered sex offender lived across the street from his office. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to act differently or how he could assess whether the offender was any sort of a risk.
He said that offenders like Bourgeois didn't need to have the community watching him.
Even Charles Branson, Douglas County district attorney, said that the scope of the list might be too wide.
"Does the list being all encompassing lessen the purpose of the list? Maybe," Branson said.
But Whitney Watson, spokesperson for Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, said that keeping a broad range of criminals on the list was necessary because of the nature of sex offenders and their tendency to repeat their crimes.
DIFFERENT THAN OTHER CRIMINALS?
"We're in favor of this because it helps identify those individuals whose crimes tend to be repeated," Watson said. "The recidivism rate for sexual offenses is proof enough for the need of a sex offender registry."
But the U.S. Department of
Justice reports that only five out of every 100 sex offenders will repeat the same crime compared with six out of 100 nonsexual criminals who will reoffend.
That means of Lawrence's 50 sex offenders, between two to three are statistically apt to reoffend.
For Branson, that's threatening enough to keep the scope of the registry wide enough to include even minor offenders.
"There's still a large number of crimes that are committed by strangers," Branson said. "The goal is to try and have a mechanism to prevent things from happening."
Fischli, the director of sex offenders at the department of corrections, agreed it was appropriate to single out all sex offenders to protect a small number of potential victims.
"I think that there are times when a society has to do things in an attempt to make the innocent more safe at the expense of the guilty," Fischli said.
The list acted as a deterrent to potential criminals, Watson said.
"One would think that it helps prevent a sex offender from preying on little children when he knows his identity and address are out there on the Web," Watson said. "It should also be effective as parents of children can become better informed about what potential dangers to their children may be living in the vicinity."
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But McAllister said that the list wouldn't do much to prevent such crimes because so many sex crimes go unreported that the list is not indicative of precisely who commits them.
Only one in every four rapes and sexual assaults are reported to law enforcement, according to the Crime Victims Council, a non-profit victims rights advocacy group. Of sexually abused children in grades five through 12, fewer than half of the boys and only three out of every 10 girls report the crime.
Crenshaw agreed that the list would mislead the public into thinking that they knew where all potential criminals were.
"I don't want the registry to create false security," Crenshaw said. "There are far more
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