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And under current laws, authorities are permitted to inform the public of their release. Now personal information is accessible to the curious and concerned in cyberspace.
Since the state’s first registered sex offender was released in
La Crosse under public notification laws in 1998, communities and released sex offenders have engaged in an uneasy dance. Of the 18,221 registered sex offenders in Wisconsin, 183 — all but five are men — call La Crosse home.
Sex offender therapists agree that the community doesn’t distinguish between the severity of offenses, and that’s a problem. They assume all sex offenders are child molesters or sexual psychopaths.
And after they have served their time, offenders face their own struggles as they attempt to readapt to the community.
Sex offenders banned
The La Crosse Area Family YMCA has shut its doors to sex offenders. After four months of discussion, the board of directors banned sex offenders last month.
Executive Director Bill Soper said the organization began discussing the ban in November at the recommendation of the YMCA of the USA.
Arnold Collins, spokesman for the YMCA of the USA, said the organization recommends the termination of sex offenders’ memberships and ban of future ones because “the safety of children is so important to YMCAs.”
Soper said the local YMCA discussed the issues of statutory rape and the possibility of making exceptions in some cases. Ultimately, the board took a zero-tolerance stance.
Of the YMCA’s 8,300 members, five males were convicted sex offenders, Soper said.
The offenders were sent a letter explaining the termination. The YMCA plans to announce the ban to members in its spring newsletter.
Soper said the ban was a logical step to make because it minimizes the risk to members.
“We would never hire an offender, so why should we have them in the building?” Soper said.
The YMCA will check new member applications against the National Sex Offender Registry before anyone is admitted.
It is not known how many of the 2,594 national branches of the YMCA have passed the ban.
Offenders aren’t welcome at Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Coulee Region, either. Executive Director Beth Twiton said anyone convicted of a crime against another person is ineligible for the program.
At least one male who applied last year was a sex offender. Twiton said it’s unclear whether he wanted to be a Big Brother because he had rebuilt his life and wanted to help, or because he wanted to get close to children.
“We fear the latter,” Twiton said. “Child safety is our top priority.”
Keeping track
Mike Johnson, a registration specialist with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, has worked with hundreds of registered sex offenders in his 14 years with the department.
The department works to protect the community from offenders by making them abide by a strict set of rules through probation or parole, Johnson said. The department also sends a letter at least once a year to the last known address of the offender requesting verification, he said.
The public notification process begins shortly before an offender is released from prison, when they are entered into the sex offender registry, Johnson said.
Depending on the severity of the offense, the state notifies the police department or other agencies. Serious offenders require community-wide notification in an open forum.
Electronic monitoring and a pilot Global Positioning System allow the department to track offenders, Johnson said.
Will they re-offend?
While victims and the community often fear the presence of sex offenders because they believe they’re likely to re-offend, government data shows released sex offenders are less likely than other criminals to commit another crime.
The U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics compiled what it says is the largest study of its type in October 2003 on re-arrest, reconviction and re-imprisonment among 9,691 male sex offenders. Subjects were tracked for three years after their release from 15 state prisons.
A similar study was conducted by the bureau the same year, tracking 272,111 released prisoners who committed crimes of all types.
According to Bureau of Justice Statistics:
The registry
Heather and Robert Edwards, their daughters, 6 years and 7 months, and son, 4, moved into an apartment on McHugh Road in Holmen, Wis., in early March. They had no idea that a 35-year-old man convicted of second-degree sexual assault of a child in May 2001 lived two doors down.
A neighbor warned Heather Edwards. She has never seen the offender, but said it’s unsettling to know he’s close.
“I’ve woken up and made my husband check the locks, and I’m not a paranoid person,” Heather Edwards said. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have moved here.”
For people like the Edwardses, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections’ Sex Offender Registry — the official state sex offender Web site — means sex offenders can’t legally hide.
Anyone convicted of a sexual offense on or after Dec. 25, 1993, is required to register and must remain on the registry for at least 15 years. The first time an offender will be removed will be in 2008.
The department added home addresses of registered sex offenders to the online registry Dec. 1. Since that time, Web site traffic has tripled to an average of 75,000 hits each week, Gov. Jim Doyle said.
Doyle announced in late February the state’s Sex Offender Accountability and Felony Enforcement Initiative tracked down more than 400 sex offenders who failed to comply with the registry.
The SAFE initiative raised Wisconsin’s compliance rate for the registry to 88 percent, compared with 76 percent nationally, Doyle added.
But sex offenders can escape the registry.
“They exist,” Johnson said. “But they might not know the obligation to the registry or know the complexity of the laws.”
La Crosse was the first city in Wisconsin to house a released sex offender under the Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Law in 1998, Police Chief Ed Kondracki said. He said the department should release as much information about the offender as permissible under state law.
“Anonymity spurs criminal acts,” Kondracki said. “I believe our community likes to receive our information.”
Megan’s Law, an amendment to the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offenders Act, was passed in 1996 and mandates all states develop notification protocols that allow public access to information about sex offenders, according to the Department of Corrections.
The law was named after 7-year-old Megan Kanka, who was raped and murdered by a twice-convicted child molester in her New Jersey neighborhood in 1994.
“Forewarned is forearmed,” Kondracki said. “We ought to know who our neighbors are.”
The Department of Corrections stresses that notification and the registry are not intended for residents to use the information to injure, harass or commit crimes against people in the registry, their families or employers.
On the Web
The dissemination of information about sex offenders has led to the proliferation of Web sites that map offenders’ locations.
One of the most popular sites is www.mapsexoffenders.com, a family-run site based in Orem, Utah. The family downloads an updated offender list from the national registry once a week for 42 states, including Wisconsin and Minnesota, but will soon update daily, site employee Mark Olsen said.
The free Web site allows users to search for offenders by address. Each offender is highlighted with a red balloon and users can click the balloon to view the offender, photo and current address. The map provides a link to state registries for additional information.
The site also runs an alphabetized list of sex offenders by name in each ZIP code with a hyperlink to show the offender’s location. Users can sign up for e-mail alerts. Olsen said the site can get 100,000 hits on a busy day.
Olsen’s family started the site in summer 2005 after they joined more than 3,000 volunteers searching for a missing 11-year-old Utah Boy Scout Brennan Hawkins in June 2005. Before he was found alive four days later, the Utah news media speculated that Hawkins was abducted by a sex offender. His family was unable to find user-friendly Web sites.
La Crosse Police Capt. Rob Abraham said his department wants to produce a similar map for the department’s Web site.
“We see our Web site as a service to the community and a map would follow that,” Abraham said.
Challenges, struggles
La Crosse sex offender therapists counsel hundreds of released sex offenders each year. Offenders struggle with readjustment and personal problems as they attempt to readapt to the community.
Terry Marshall, ATTIC Correctional Services chief executive officer and president, has worked with hundreds of recently released sex offenders in his 24 years with the organization. ATTIC provides transitional housing, day reporting and treatment.
Marshall said the most difficult obstacle offenders face is housing. They must abide by the rules of their probation or parole, which can restrict them from living near their families or where children are present. It’s not uncommon for landlords to deny the offender residence either.
Ron McGuire, executive director and senior therapist of Ron McGuire Family Therapy Center, has been treating sex offenders for 37 years and estimates he sees about 300 each year.
It’s often difficult for his clients to find employment, though they’re well qualified, McGuire said. The chances for the position are good until they have to check the felony box, McGuire said. “It’s amazing how many don’t hear from the job again,” he said.
Marshall added that offenders must find employment without interaction with people who would cause concern.
A lack of employment immediately leads to financial struggles, he said.
Johnson said offenders are no longer accustomed to everyday tasks, such as grocery shopping, and must take time to ease back into society. “Some hit the panic button within a day or two,” Johnson said.
They also suffer from fear and paranoia, feeling isolated from the community, McGuire said. “(La Crosse) is a relatively small town and they believe they’re in the public eye,” he said.
Offenders also experience personal feelings of inadequacy and shame, blame and guilt — “and they should feel some of that,” McGuire said.
Jim LaJeunesse, director and family therapist of the Center for Effective Living and a member of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, has counseled juvenile sex offenders who committed crimes against family members and are attempting to rejoin the family. He estimates he has counseled hundreds of offenders since he came to La Crosse in 1979.
Ostracized offenders are at greater risk of acting out sexually, LaJeunesse said. “Those who are socially isolated are at a greater risk for sexually deviant behavior,” he said.
The registry can lead the offender to feel discriminated against and labeled as a leper or monster, LaJeunesse said.
With proper treatment, LaJeunesse said, juvenile offenders are rarely a threat to society.
The community
People who deal with offenders agree La Crosse is responsible and generally reasonable as offenders try to readjust to the community.
Johnson believes the offenders are “treated fairly.”
“But there’s still a grudge held by a lot of people,” Johnson said.
“When people see an offender that is really motivated to turn their life around, they’re treated pretty decent.”
McGuire said he’s proud of the way La Crosse treats sex offenders. On a scale of one to 10, with 10 representing full acceptance, McGuire believes the community falls in the 6.5 to 7.5 range. “La Crosse has worked to understand (sex offenders),” McGuire said. “I feel good about that.”
But Johnson said the community tends to lump all offenders into the most dangerous group and fears recidivism.
“They feel once an offender, always an offender,” McGuire said. “I hope the community will take the time to look at each individual offender.”
Offenders who have served their sentences should be given a chance, Marshall said.
“You really want to know what kind of offender your neighbor is,” Marshall said. “Offenders hide in silence and in the shadows. If we bring them out of the shadows, it’s better for them and the community.”
LaJeunesse recommends researching the offense and age of the victim, then evaluating the risk of reoffending before ostracizing sex offenders.
“Our community has been willing to maintain an open mind when it comes to offenders,” Kondracki said. “The community ought to give the individual a chance to rehabilitate.”
Anne Jungen can be reached at (608) 791-8224 or ajungen@lacrossetribune.com.
