Double/Triple/Quadruple Counting of the number Registered Sex Offenders Nationally

2011: This originally appeared in my old website HERE, now being brought forward to this blog. See also: The Fleecing of America: Are States Using Sex Offender Registries for Profiteering?

November 2005:

The evolution of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006:

The initially act was HR-3132 `Children's Safety Act of 2005' which the House passed and sent to the Senate and died in the Senate. Then Rep. Sensenbrenner morphed HR-3132 into a new bill HR-4472 `Children's Safety and Violent Crime Reduction Act of 2006' which the House passed on 3-8-2006 and sent to the Senate. The Senate had serious concerns with HR-4472 and they developed their own version and passed it on 5-4-2006, it was called S-1086-ES `Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act' sending it to the House. A stalemate, the House did not pass the Senate version.

Both the House and the Senate knew they were at an impasse and that the President wanted something passed before election time. So off they went behind closed doors and not allowing the public to provide any input they created the HR-4472-ENR `Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006' which the Senate passed on 7-20-2006, then the House passed it on 7-25-2006, so that it could be signed by the President on 7-27-2006 the Anniversary of the murder of Adam Walsh (an unsolved crime to this date, so it is not known whether any sex offender was involved in his murder).

Now, the entire "Sec. 106" from the Senate S-1086-ES was brought forward to the Adam Walsh EXCEPT Sec 106(c) shown below.

So it begs two questions:

1) Why would they not want the public to know how many registered sex offenders nationally?

2) Why would they not want to ensure that registered sex offenders (RSO) are not being double, triple, quadruply counted?

Well, neither question is relevant but logically inferred by the withdrawn section 106(c), what they do not want revealed is, that what politicians the media and oodles of other folks have been touting "there are over 500,000 sex offenders nationally" is most certainly incorrect. Revealing such a fact, just before elections, would cause chaos and many might not be re-elected, hence section 106(c) was deleted from the Adam Walsh Act.

Throughout the Internet and in the media the sources of these figures has been Parents for Megan's Law and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, neither of which do I believe has done anything wrong. The real source of the problem is in the way states account for RSOs. A few examples, some noted by the article "Ghosts in the Machine," are:

A) It is a well known fact that many RSOs move around frequently, the registry causes that but most will not admit that. When they register in the new jurisdiction then they are registered in two places, then several states enacted laws to require RSOs to report to both jurisdictions to correct the records. First, no one took care of what had happened up to that point (California was missing 33,000 and somehow that was cleared up, by quietly correcting the double postings when they realized what was going on [see: 4-5-2003 California].). Second, some offenders moved state to state looking for a better life, again double counted by being in both registries (to show from and to). Another is an even bigger problem, college RSOs who move (technically) for a semester then back at the end of the semester, double counted. There are numerous other ways that this occurs. Congress recognized these circumstances and inserted into the Adam Walsh Act Sec. 119(b) "Electronic Forwarding," computerized notification of all jurisdictions of any change to a RSOs record.

B) The requirement to register where a person resides, works, and goes to school; that could be up to 3 jurisdictions, up to triple counting. Then some jurisdictions require registration if a person is only going to be there "temporarily," couple that with residence, work, and school, up to quadruple counting. There have been many news reports of local jurisdictions (with their own registry) showing one number of registered offenders and that disagreeing with what the state shows. Nothing in the Adam Walsh act seems to resolve these conflicts.

C) The research done by the journalist in "Ghosts in the Machine" was stunning, proof that the dead cannot get up out of their grave to provide the state with a death certificate to have their name removed (Florida requires that death certificate for removal of a name). Also proving that those who are incarcerated, after registering, cannot leave incarceration to correct the local jurisdiction's records. Nothing in the Adam Walsh act seems to resolve these conflicts.

There is no doubt in this writer's mind that, the -failure to include- Sec. 106(c) of the Adam Walsh Act, is proof that they do not want the public to know the truth, one could even infer it was a cover-up, PR damage control, or to permit the sound bites to continue to garner votes at election time. Are there over 100,000 missing sex offenders -OR- are there over 100,000 "Ghost Numbers?" Remember the states receive federal grant money -annually- based upon the number of registered offenders they have (Title 42 Section 14071(i)(2)(B)). What do you think?

2005 S-1086 Sponsored by Sen. Hatch:
SEC. 106. PARTICIPATING STATE SEX OFFENDER REGISTRIES.

(c) Publication of Number of Offenders Registered-

(1) IN GENERAL- Every 6 months, the Attorney General shall collect from each State information on the total number of covered individuals included in the registry maintained by that State.

(2) PUBLIC AVAILABILITY AND CONTENTS- The Attorney General shall--

(A) release information under paragraph (1) to the public in a manner consistent with this title; and

(B) include in such a release the number of individuals within each tier and the number of individuals who are in compliance with this title within each tier.

(3) DOUBLE-COUNTING- In reporting information collected under paragraph (1), the Attorney General shall ensure, to the extent practicable, that offenders are not being double-counted.

Sheriff: Sex offender says he killed teen

David Onstott, yes a former sex offender, admitted killing Sarah Lunde, but there is a significant fact that most folks do not realize, he was never charged with any sex crime as part of the murder, because there was nothing sexual about the murder. However, there is some proof that it may have been drug related.

4-18-2005 Florida:

RUSKIN - Less than three hours after a memorial for 13-year-old Sarah Michelle Lunde on Sunday, Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee announced that registered sex offender David Lee Onstott had confessed to killing her.

On hearing the news, Rebekah Lunde, Sarah's 22-year-old sister, collapsed in the parking lot of the First Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ, where Sarah was a regular.

"You are talking about a person who would murder a child," the sheriff said, declining to give many details about Onstott's confession. "Who knows what's in his mind."

Onstott is charged with first degree murder. In a court appearance Monday, Onstott made no statement and was ordered to be held without bond. Prosecutor Mark Ober said no decision has been made on whether to seek the death penalty.

Gee sketched out the sequence of the killing.

Onstott, who months ago had dated Sarah's mother, Kelly May, went to the Lunde home on April 10, between midnight and 4 a.m. Sarah was inside alone.

He "knocked on the door and the victim yelled to him to open the door," Gee said. Inside, Onstott and Sarah began arguing, then Onstott "put the victim in a choke hold, causing her to become unconscious" and then die, Gee said.

Onstott then hid the body in an abandoned fish farm pond a half mile south of her home, authorities said.

"When he put her there, he went through great effort to keep the body from being discovered," the sheriff said Sunday.

Gee said that when Sarah's body was pulled from the pond Saturday, it was partly clothed.

An autopsy by the medical examiner will determine whether Sarah was sexually assaulted, Gee said.

Asked whether he thinks Onstott should receive the death penalty, he said: "That's going to be for the state attorney (to decide). I certainly hope so."

Before her disappearance, Sarah had spent the weekend in Apopka, at a youth rally with First Apostolic Church members.

She returned to Ruskin that Saturday, April 9, attended a birthday party and was home by 9 p.m. Her mother, not expecting Sarah to return until Sunday, was out of town.

Only Sarah's 17-year-old brother, Andrew Lunde, was at home. She asked him to get her something to eat that night, but instead, he left and hung out with friends until 4 a.m., he told detectives.

When he came home, the front door of their mobile home at 2512 30th St. SE was "wide open" and Sarah was gone.

He told WTSP-Ch. 10 that Onstott showed up about 5 a.m. and asked to see his mother. Onstott left when he learned she wasn't there, taking a beer bottle from the home, Andrew Lunde said.

Sarah's mother got home that Sunday. She and Sarah's brother assumed that the sixth-grader was staying with a friend Sunday night.

But on Monday, when May checked at Beth Shields Elementary School and found that no one had seen her daughter, she reported Sarah missing, and the weeklong search began. Hundreds of people joined the search. A search dog and handler found Sarah's body Saturday morning at the fish farm at 3530 30th St. SE.

Onstott's most recent girlfriend said Sunday that she did not think he committed the crime, despite the confession.

Ashley Poston of Ruskin said she and Onstott have been dating and living together for about three months and that it had been at least four months since Onstott visited the Lunde family's home.

"I just don't believe he did it at all," the 20-year-old day care worker said. "He's not like that."

It's more likely, Poston said, that Onstott was tired and gave in to pressure by law enforcement officials to confess.

The last time Poston saw Onstott was Monday morning, when she asked him to leave. Poston said she had found out that one of Onstott's ex-girlfriends had a restraining order against him and they argued. Onstott had earlier denied that, she said.

"I told him that I didn't want to be with a liar," Poston said in a telephone interview.

Even though the couple broke up a week ago, Poston had high hopes for their relationship.

Onstott, she said, made her feel good about herself and got along well with her two children, both toddlers. He watched her children several times without incident while she went to the grocery store, she said.

Poston, who met Onstott six months ago, thought they would get back together. "I was planning on marrying this man," Poston said. "He was good to my kids. He just treated me right. He was a good man."

He also was a man with a criminal record. Onstott, of 3510 Petrova Circle in Ruskin, was convicted in 1995 of sexual battery on a Hillsborough acquaintance. She testified that he knocked on her door, asked to use the bathroom, then threw her to the floor and raped her. A jury convicted him.

In a letter to the court asking a judge for leniency in his rape sentence, Onstott said the jurors didn't have all the information they needed to come to a verdict. He said they never got to hear about the plaintiff's drug history and that he never forced himself on her sexually. It was a case, Onstott said, of exchanging cocaine for sex.

"I would also like to state that I am a hard working person and have been so all my life," Onstott wrote to the judge. "I have set goals to better myself ... I know that if I were to have my sentence reduced, I could help the police in my town of Ruskin put away the cocaine dealers ... because I know their sources."

He served six years in prison and was ordered to serve probation.

Court records show that Onstott violated his probation in October 2002 when he hit a man across the face with a machete.

Onstott has been at the Hillsborough County's Orient Road Jail since Tuesday, on an unrelated charged of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Authorities say he threatened a man on Tuesday with a screwdriver during a "heated argument."

An official records check revealed that Onstott was wanted for driving under the influence in Michigan, where his mother and three children live. Deputies later added a fugitive charge and a charge of failing to register as a sexual offender.

He was held without bail even before the murder charge.

During Sunday morning church service, before Gee announced Onstott's confession, Patrick Beaver told the congregation to take comfort that Sarah was in a better place. "Whoever did this, one day, he will have to answer to God," Beaver said. "(Jesus) is a lamb in forgiveness and a lion in judgment."

About 70 family members and friends of the Lunde family, came to the church for the memorial that was to follow the regular church service. They chose not to attend the regular service, but planned to attend the memorial immediately following.

But when the service ended and the memorial began, no one notified them and they missed it.

When told of the mixup near the end of the memorial, the pastor, the Rev. Johnny Cook, said, "It's too late now. We'll fellowship with them when we're done."

Doris Fontana's 13-year-old daughter, Leslie, was best friends with Sarah. Fontana had planned a 50th birthday party for her husband, John, the afternoon that Sarah and other church youth returned from Apopka.

Leslie asked her mother to let Sarah spend the night, but Fontana said no. "I hold a little measure of guilt for that," she said.

Sarah had told Leslie she didn't like Onstott, Fontana said. But Fontana said she never found out why.

John Fontana held up a picture Sunday showing Sarah at his birthday party. "For all I know," he said, "I fixed her last meal." ..Source.. by KEVIN GRAHAM

Couey's life path mostly a dead end

See also: Sexual crimes: No easy answers

3-27-2005 Florida:

The man accused of killing Jessica Lunsford has spent his existence mostly as an aimless, unsettling vagabond who was no stranger to police.

HOMOSASSA - For all of his adult life, John E. Couey lived like a vagrant. He worked dead-end jobs for petty cash. He drank much of the money he made.

Repeatedly, he wound up in jail for a night or a month or longer, because he passed hot checks or broke into someone's house. It was so common for him to be behind bars that he once listed the Citrus County jail as his address.

"He stayed with whoever would take him in," said Sherry Rhoden, who met Couey in the late 1970s. "He was like one of the strays in the neighborhood, like a stray dog."

People who know Couey said he's a hard worker when he does get hired. But he goads people. He's loud-mouthed, though he would run before he would fight. He talks nonsense, then clams up when questioned about his past.

On March 21, Couey, 46, was arrested. He is accused of the sexual assault and murder of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford, who lived around the corner from his latest landing spot in Homosassa.

It turns out that Couey, the aimless, burned-out vagabond, had reason to hide his history.


* * *

Even people who have known Couey for years don't know where he was born, where he went to school.

He doesn't talk about that. He doesn't talk about his family. In prison records, he said he had a wife, a son and a stepdaughter. They were on his visitors list in 1991 and off the list when he returned to prison in 1995.

He said his father died; his mother lived somewhere in Osceola County.

"When it came to his mom, that was a closed subject for him," said Cynthia Lolley, whose father-in-law Elvin Lolley periodically gave Couey work on his fishing boats.

Couey's name first surfaces in Citrus County public records when he was arrested in 1977, at 18. It wasn't his first arrest, just his first as an adult.

He broke into three houses not far from where Dorothy Marie Dixon, his half-sister, lived. According to Rhoden, Dorothy Dixon's husband, Bill, didn't want Couey around.

So he drifted around the neighborhood and sidled up to Elvin Lolley, who let him stay in a railroad trailer parked behind his house.

"He didn't seem like a real bad feller," said Lolley.

Rhoden, Lolley's daughter, thought otherwise.

"I always knew he was a creep," she said. "Nothing bothered him. It was like he'd been through worse.

"He always put off this presence that he had these things to hide, and you knew it, but you couldn't get it out of him."

Couey was sentenced to six months in jail for the burglaries, but got out early for good behavior. His jailer said the quick release would help in Couey's rehabilitation.

Three days later, he was arrested again. This time, he had climbed through the window of a child's bedroom and grabbed her, clamping his hand over her mouth when she awoke. She broke free and darted, hollering, to her mother.

From his jail cell, Couey wrote a note to his lawyer, saying he had a "mental problem."

"When I was young I saw a doctor of the mind," he wrote. "I saw many psychiatrists and they confirmed I have a mental disease."

He asked to be sent to a "mental home."

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and got out in 21/2. He was back behind bars within seven months - another burglary.

When he got out the next time, an entire day passed before he was arrested again.


* * *

At age 26, Couey married Karen Joan Goshe in a church ceremony in Crystal River.

Marriage didn't change his life. The family bounced around Georgia and Florida, with both Coueys arrested for bad checks, DUI, failure to appear in court, violation of probation.

One May morning in 1987, a Lake City officer, called to a trailer park for a reported disturbance, found Couey hiding naked in the shrubs. He was charged with, among other things, indecent exposure - his second arrest involving aberrant behavior.

By 1991, his marriage was essentially over.

Karen Couey was in Fort Lauderdale, building an arrest record of prostitution and cocaine possession charges. John Couey was in Kissimmee, living near the railroad tracks with an elderly woman and her sons.

"All he did was drink and fish," said one of the sons, Ronald J. Tittle. "As far as we knew, he was just a loner when my mom took him in."

Couey worked in construction and washed dishes at a nearby Shoney's restaurant.

"He went from job to job, always getting paid under the table," Tittle said. "Then as soon as he got his money, he'd drink it up."

In April 1991, a 5-year-old child who lived near the Tittles was riding her bike outside. Couey would later say he went into the child's yard to watch her, then called her over to him behind the house near the air-conditioning unit. "Want to play hide and go seek?" he asked.

"She said yes, so we did," Couey told the Kissimmee police in a taped statement. Then he asked her to sit with him. "She sat on my lap - voluntarily. I didn't force her to do it, voluntarily."

In unemotional, detached terms, he described how he exposed himself to the child and got her to touch him. "I did not molest her," he said.

When the child's mother called for her, Couey fled.

Couey told the police "this was not the first child he had ever touched, however, this is the first time he was caught," the investigator's report said. He also admitted to molesting a relative's child.

As he did after his 1978 arrest, Couey asked for psychiatric help.

"Personally, I feel prison ain't gonna help me," he told the police. "I feel that I need help for myself . . . I don't want to go to prison, I want help for myself."

Sentenced to five years in prison, he was released in two.

Distraught, the mother of his victim sought a restraining order to keep Couey away from her daughter.

"He has had no rehabilitation for this sickness," she wrote. "The victim's advocate's office in Orlando and the state Corrections Department . . . stated a restraining order is the extent of my additional effort to keep any restrictions on this man. He will not be on any parole or special probation. He will be free."


* * *

Back in Citrus, Couey washed dishes at Emily's Restaurant in Homosassa and slept in a shed out back. Emily's owner George Kanaris called Couey "a rogue."

Kanaris felt sorry for Couey, who said he had been abused all his life because of his size. Couey is 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighs about 120 pounds.

Still, Kanaris was unsettled by some of Couey's behavior. Couey would say something like, "Wow, look at that woman."

"And you would go over and look and she would be 10 or 12 years old," Kanaris said.

Kanaris fired Couey in 1994 after finding a love letter Couey wrote to a 14-year-old girl who worked at the restaurant.

"He was mad," Kanaris said of Couey. "He didn't think he had done anything wrong. He told me he was her "soul mate, Dawg.' That's how he talked."

Over the next decade, Couey was arrested five more times, served time in jail, served time in state prison and moved frequently.

In August 2003, he was living in a mobile home across the street from a Homosassa bar. He got work as a mason's tender on the Crystal River Middle School construction project. He was a registered sex offender, though his parole officer wasn't informed of that.

Workers at the middle school construction site were strictly prohibited from being anywhere near students or faculty, according to Giles Cannon, a mason on the job.

That wasn't the case at Homosassa Elementary School, where Couey went to work early in 2004, according to Cannon and mason Will Doherty, who also worked at Homosassa.

There, students, teachers and laborers mingled often, the two masons said.

"I actually dated one of the teachers for a short period of time. I was in her classroom," said Doherty. "Does that answer the question of whether the workers and school people mingled?"

Last summer, Couey's brother-in-law, William Troy Dixon, died. In January, Dorothy Dixon and her children sold the mobile home across from the bar, where Couey had lived with them.

Soon after, a different mobile home was placed on Snowbird Court in Homosassa, around the corner from the Sonata Avenue home of the Lunsfords - grandparents, father and a 9-year-old girl.

Within weeks, Dorothy Dixon, her boyfriend and some of her relatives took up residence in the mobile home.

Couey, Dixon's half-brother, moved in with them. ..Source.. by COLLINS CONNER and BARBARA BEHRENDT

Times staff writer Abbie VanSickle and researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report. Collins Conner can be reached at conner@sptimes.com or 727 869-6243. Barbara Behrendt can be reached at behrendt@sptimes.com or (352) 564-3621.

Sexual crimes: No easy answers

See also: Couey's life path mostly a dead end

4-24-2005 Florida:

Everyone agrees something must be done, but solutions are confounded by the complexity of the problem.

From rural Hillsborough and Citrus counties to the polished corridors of Tallahassee, the furor over sex offenders crescendoed last week as legislators passed new laws and parents kept a more watchful eye over their children.

The killings of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford and 13-year-old Sarah Lunde have brought a moment of introspection for all of Florida.

Amid the soul searching, experts caution that men such as John Couey, accused of molesting and killing Jessica, make up a tiny fraction of sexual offenders.

The real truth of sex offenders is quieter, more insidious: Thousands of men violating their own children, their neighbor's prepubescent boys, the teenage daughters of relatives and friends.

The prevailing wisdom among experts is that a sex offender cannot be cured. He can only decide to stop.

Armies of professionals have spent careers trying to help sex offenders through treatments employing everything from red fox urine to penile plethysmographs, a device to measure arousal.

The fact remains that as many as 55 percent of offenders will abuse again, experts say.

What, then, to do with Florida's 35,000 registered sexual offenders?


* * *

The problem is inscrutably complex, and frightening.

Some experts talk of a breed of men so predatory and dangerous that they cannot be treated and should spend their lives in prison.

But jail cells alone won't fix the problem.

"There's an unlimited supply" of sex offenders, said Robert Longo, a South Carolina therapist who co-founded the national Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers. "For every one we catch, there's two more cropping up behind the bushes."

Offenders come in myriad varieties - from child molesters to rapists to 19-year-olds who date younger teens. A one-size-fits-all policy won't work.

Experts advocate a multifaceted approach: finding the worst offenders and wrapping the toughest laws around them. Strictly monitoring the offenders who leave prison. Finding those who can be treated and helping them.

With the right tools, some offenders can be rehabilitated, they say.

In therapists' offices across Florida, group counseling for offenders unfolds every week. The shock treatment popular in the 1970s has been replaced with cognitive behavioral therapy, which focuses on changing a man's thinking.

Offenders young and old pay $25 every week for two to five years and talk about what they did.

They also learn arousal management.

A counselor might have a molester come up with a few sentences about why he is attracted to young boys, then repeat it for hours until it seems utterly boring. Another method is to have an offender think about a sex offense, then about something unpleasant, like eating roaches, said psychologist Ted Shaw, co-author of the 1989 book The Child Molester and owner of a company that treats 800 sex offenders on probation in Florida.

Research shows therapy may help, but not by large margins.

One study indicated that those who receive treatment re-offend at a rate of 10 percent over four to five years, compared with 17 percent of untreated offenders, said R. Karl Hanson, senior research officer with Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada.

What's more, no one knows which methods work best.

"We don't know what about treatment is most important," Hanson said.

There are no guarantees, even with therapy.

"It's a choice. It's not something people are compelled to do," Hanson said. "So as with any human behavior, it is never predicted with complete accuracy."


* * *

The state has tried to isolate its worst offenders, such as Todd Gray.

Inside a tall, gray locker at the head of his bed, the 48-year-old Gray keeps school books with titles such as Taking the Lead and Introduction to Business. One day, he hopes to get a business degree.

But what he has really been learning the past four years is how to stop raping women.

He lives behind rolls of razor wire at the Florida Civil Commitment Center in Arcadia, home to 475 of the state's worst sexual offenders.

In concrete block buildings built during World War II, the two-time rapist has written a sex offense autobiography. He has told groups of other sex offenders how one night in 1989 he had been out drinking and smoking marijuana in Vero Beach and he was going to commit a burglary. He broke into a woman's house, she woke up, then he raped her.

Gray has participated in group sessions with names such as "stress and relaxation" and "victim empathy." He has thought of his most deviant fantasies while smelling red fox urine and ammonia. He has been wired up to a penile plethysmograph, a device with a thin metal band that measures his arousal at various stimuli.

"I figured I'm here, so I might as well take advantage of what they have to offer," said Gray, who wore black shorts and a shirt imprinted with palm trees during an interview last year. "See if I can't maybe come out of here a better person."

Under a law passed in 1998, the state can involuntarily commit sexually violent prisoners for treatment after their prison sentences end. The law was named after Jimmy Ryce, a 9-year-old boy from Miami-Dade County who was killed by a child molester in 1995.

But the program is expensive - and not smashingly successful.

It costs about $47,000 a year for each patient, and only 167 of the 475 patients are actually receiving treatment. Most of the others refuse to participate. No one has successfully completed the program and been released.

The situation is similar at Atascadero State Hospital in California, home to about 600 of the state's most dangerous sexual offenders, 75 percent of whom decline treatment.

"Most have lifetimes of deviant illegal behavior," said psychiatrist Gabrielle Paladino. "Many have told us that they will continue if they ever get released. Some have said they're just hopping mad that their behavior has been interrupted."

Some experts question spending the money.

"Just put them in prison," Longo says, "and don't worry about treating them."

But that won't work for everyone, either.


* * *

Many people who need and want help don't get it.

One example: John Couey.

He requested mental health assistance for nearly three decades. He told police in 1991 that he had a problem but had not received help to "control his sexual attraction for young children."

Now, judges routinely order sex offender counseling after prison. But many offenders have slipped through.

Both Couey and David Onstott, accused of murdering 13-year-old Sarah Lunde, were convicted of prior sex offenses. Neither has received treatment.

"There's a lot of people who are running around out there from years past who haven't been touched by treatment," said Bob Whitford, a Tampa psychotherapist who treats sex offenders.

Florida used to have limited sex offender programs in its state prisons. Inmates could be sent to three hospitals until 1989, though the waiting list was long. Former Gov. Bob Martinez cut funding for the programs, however, and now the prisons offer no specific sex offender treatment.

Many counselors think the prison programs should be revived.

Through treatment, someone like Couey would have raised red flags, therapists say.

"These are people who, if properly handled, would have been seen as just what they were - dangerous people," Whitford said.

"That's one of the problems. These people are not handled very well in the courts. They're not handled very well when released from prison. Professionals like me don't get the chance to do risk assessment on them."

Whitford thinks that if he had had a chance to treat Couey, he would have foreseen the trouble.

"I've been doing this too long," he said. "His history cries out."


* * *

Sen. Nancy Argenziano had been glued to the television for days, hoping for any word about Jessica Lunsford.

Then, on March 19, she received a telephone call from Citrus County Sheriff Jeff Dawsy. He told her the body of the 9-year-old girl was found buried outside the mobile home where her accused murderer had been living.

"It was devastating to know that Jessie wasn't coming home to us," Argenziano said.

She took the murder personally, and immediately started working on the only available solution - legislation.

"I'm her senator," the Dunnellon Republican said. "I feel like I owe her something."

She knew her first instinct - lock up all sex offenders forever - was irrational. But other lawmakers felt it, too.

Their attempts "to do something" underscored the conundrum of dealing with the complex world of sexual offenders. Their suggestions ranged from chemical castration to surgically implanted Global Positioning System monitors.

The emotional reaction worried Senate President Tom Lee, a Brandon Republican.

As the father of an 8-year-old girl, Lee said he was as moved as anyone by Jessica's death.

"I don't need a lesson from anybody about how important this is," Lee said. "I want to make sure we don't overreact and knee-jerk when there's a problem out there that is crying out for a solution."

For more than a month, Lee's office has been flooded with messages from people begging him for tougher legislation against sex criminals. But Lee said he wanted to make sure the hard-core sexual offenders get punished, not the 18-year-old boy who is dating a 15-year-old girl.

"If you elevate sex crimes against minors and you apply those penalties to minors who are approaching adulthood, you set up a whole series of unintended consequences," he said.

Lee said he was particularly distressed by some of the circumstances surrounding the murder of Sarah Lunde. The 13-year-old Ruskin girl was left alone by her mother and older brother the night she was abducted and killed.

"The parents have to bear some responsibility," Lee said. "I'm not a prude, and I understand all families don't manage their responsibilities the same way, but a 13-year-old girl ought not to be left alone at night. And you can't pass a law fixing that."

As lawmakers debated, Argenziano began talks with Lee, law enforcement officers and prosecutors. Their brainstorming session eventually became the Jessica Lunsford Act, which requires anyone convicted of molesting a child under 12 serve a sentence of 25 years to life. If the offender is released, he or she must wear an electronic monitoring device for life.

No bill is perfect, Argenziano said. But it's a start.

"I think there will always be this kind of deviant in the world. My first concern is to get them all off the street," she said. "Even though we called it the Jessica Lunsford Act, it's for every child, girl or boy, who has been sexually molested."

Times staff writer Steve Bousquet contributed to this report. Jamie Thompson can be reached at 727 893-8455. Send e-mail to jthompson@sptimes.com

TREATMENTS
Some methods used in treatment and management of sex offenders

BOREDOM TAPES: A behavioral technique where the sex offender listens to his darkest fantasies on tape over and over, in hopes it results in his getting bored with the fantasy and no longer being drawn to it.

AVERSIVE CONDITIONING: A behavioral technique designed to reduce deviant sexual arousal by exposing the offender to something that arouses him while introducing an unpleasant sensation or smell, such a fox urine or ammonia.

COVERT SENSITIZATION: A behavioral technique in which a deviant fantasy is paired with unpleasant images or thoughts, creating an aversion to the inappropriate sexual behavior. The technique is also used for alcoholism, stealing and overeating.

COGNITIVE RESTRUCTURING: A treatment technique in which the sex offender is made aware of distorted thinking that supports offending and is encouraged to change those thoughts through confrontion and rebuttal.

Source: Center for Sex Offender Management ..Source..(Checked on 3-11-2011) St. Petersberg Times by JAMIE THOMPSON, LEONORA LAPETER

FL- GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE

11-24-2005 Florida:

Are dead sex offenders really dangerous?

According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Curtis Talley, 83, is a sex offender living in Seminole county. If you go to the FDLE's sex-offender registry at www3.fdle.state.fl.us/sopu and type in Talley's name, you'll find his listing and photo. You'll see that he committed sexual battery. You'll see that his crime was against a minor. You could study his yellowed eyes and note that his last known address is in Altamonte Springs. You might wonder why men like Talley are out on the streets, but if you live in Altamonte Springs you'll likely be thankful that the FDLE has alerted you to this menace. Now you can be vigilant, right?

No need. Talley won't be bothering you. He's been dead for three years. He's one of hundreds of "ghosts" on the FDLE's website who, for one reason or another, are never taken off, even though they've shuffled off this mortal coil. The only thing Talley's record – and the hundreds like it – does these days is inflate the number of sex offenders users of FDLE's website believe are loose on the streets of Florida.

And there are a lot of living people on the FDLE site who are no threat to you either. Offenders who live outside Florida, are in prison or who have been deported are all listed among the 36,037 sex criminals registered with the FDLE. All told, nearly half of that number are not here, in one way or another. Which means two things: The FDLE's website is exaggerating the threat posed by sex offenders, and you aren't getting a clear picture of who is and isn't in your neighborhood.

DAWN OF THE DEAD

As of Nov. 16, 2005 there were 541 dead or reported dead on the state rolls. It's FDLE's policy that offenders' names will remain on the rolls for one year after their death.

"If the public is checking regularly, they can be informed that an offender living nearby is no longer alive," says FDLE spokeswoman Kristen Perezluha.

That's a ridiculous policy in and of itself, says Jim Freeman. "What possible threat can a dead person pose to the public?"

Freeman is co-founder and legal affairs director for Sohopeful International, a group whose mission is to challenge overzealous and ineffective sex-offender laws. He thinks the policy of not immediately removing the dead from the rolls only contributes to an atmosphere of fear and hysteria. It's an arguable point. But often enough the FDLE isn't even following its own rules. Orlando Weekly found that of Central Florida's 57 dead or reported dead offenders, at least 23 died more than a year ago. (Most deaths were confirmed by counties, but nine were confirmed by www.rootsweb.com, a site recommended by an employee in vital statistics.)

Preston Lane Huff is registered as a sex offender in Volusia County, but he's been dead since 2001. Ernest G. Martinez is still listed even though he's been dead since 2000. And Allen P. Hubbard, who is registered in Seminole County, has been dead since August 1997, more than eight years ago. Hubbard, according to the FDLE's site, is "reported deceased." His last known address, a post office box, was posted on the FDLE site in 2001, four years after his death.

The FDLE says the reason for dead offenders populating the rolls is that it hasn't received confirmation of death. The responsibility of maintaining the website doesn't fall on any one person at FDLE. Instead, many state agencies, such as the Department of Highway Safety and the Department of Corrections, that might receive new information on an offender have the ability to update the FDLE's registry.

Perezluha says there are FDLE analysts who remove dead offenders from the site, but the system for reporting dead offenders is virtually nonexistent. There's no agreement between counties and the state to send death certificates to the FDLE. If the FDLE hears from law enforcement that one of its offenders might be dead, it's the department's responsibility to get verification, which often doesn't happen for more than a year, if at all.

This haphazard approach to updating the website is why dead people like Hubbard and Talley live on in virtual reality.

Besides the dead, there are thousands of other offenders still on the site who pose little or no threat to the public. For instance, 807 offenders have been deported, and 7,173 have moved out of state. (The high number of out-of-state offenders is likely due to Florida's requirement that sex offenders must register within 48 hours of entering the state, meaning many on the list might just be passing through.)

But the largest chunk of listed offenders who don't currently pose a threat is the incarcerated; 8,260 on Florida's rolls are in custody at the local, state or national level.

Why list people behind bars? As a precautionary measure for when they're released, says the FDLE. "A lot of offenders will stay in Florida once they get out," Perezluha says. "We're just making sure the public is informed."

If you're going to track people in prison, you'd better be diligent about it; many aren't getting out for years, and some, like Calvin J. Austin, 29, a sex offender registered in Volusia County, are in for life.

"I ask again, what purpose does it serve to list people who are in jail or aren't even in this state?" says Freeman. "They can't harm anyone while they're in custody."

FEAR AND HYSTERIA

When Megan's Law passed in 1996, it was intended to "require the release of relevant information to protect the public from sexually violent offenders." The FDLE's website is the highest-profile means of releasing that information. It's where people go when they want to know if they need to be a little extra cautious around the neighbors. According to a 2001 Department of Justice summary of sex offender registries, the FDLE's website draws about five million hits per month.

The default search settings on the site do filter out the deceased, the deported, the out-of-state and the incarcerated (except for offenders locked up in county jails).

But when you ask the state of Florida how many sex offenders it has, all of the above are included in the figure.

Besides portraying Florida as crawling with offenders, the overall figure can help determine how much money Florida gets to comply with registry laws. Under the Jacob Wetterling Act, one of the first sex-offender registry laws, the U.S. Department of Justice's Sex Offender Management Assistance Program offers grants to states to aid in compliance with registry requirements. The law states, "In allocating funds under this subsection, the director may consider the annual number of sex offenders registered in each eligible state's monitoring and notification programs."

More sex offenders equals more money. And Florida will need it, if a bill introduced by Sen. Bill Nelson makes it into law. Nelson has proposed the Sexual Predator Effective Monitoring Act of 2005, which would require tracking ankle bracelets for offenders. In the first year, the law would disperse $10 million to the states to help implement the tracking program. The proposed law states that a "share of the funding under this Act [will be] based on the total number of eligible states and the population of sex offenders to be monitored with global positioning systems in those states." Dan McLaughlin, a spokesman for Nelson, says the initial $10 million will go to the states that request and show a need for the money. If all of the states' requests add up to more than $10 million, then the allocations would be based on the number of offenders in each state. Florida, with its reported 36,037 offenders, is near the top of the list nationally.

Nelson's bill to crack down on sex offenders is one of at least five introduced at the federal level this year. To illustrate the need, Nelson remarked to his fellow senators, "In our state alone, we have over 30,000 registered sex offenders." Soon that number had shown up on CBS news and in the Christian Science Monitor, and in the months following it would be repeated on CNN and other broadcast news outlets. Two months after Nelson introduced his bill, Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings introduced the House version and again threw out the 30,000-plus figure to prove the need for the legislation.

It's a big, scary number, to be sure. If all the state's sex offenders, as reported by the FDLE, were grouped together, they'd fill the TD Waterhouse Centre to capacity. Twice. Unfortunately, the number has no relation to the reality of the problem.

Freeman, of Sohopeful, thinks the bloated figure is a danger in and of itself, as it makes it hard for people to separate the truly dangerous from the rest of the pack. "All this adds up to is fear and hysteria," he says. "That doesn't help keep people safe. But it can help politicians pass laws. It can help make them look better." ..Source.. (Orlando Weekly) by James Carlson

Excess funds received by Florida for including people not in their communities.

Reason:	No. Offenders:	% of Total Registry (36,037) on 11-16-2005
Reported Dead:	541	1.5%
Deported:	807	2.2%
Moved Out of State:	7,173	19.9%
In Jails/Prisons:	8,260	22.9%
TOTAL FUNDING EXCESS:	16,781	46.6%

Source: Extrapolated from news article "Ghosts in the Machine," article about the bloating of the Florida Sex Offender Registry.