Sexual Predator Risk Initiative

WILL A ‘SEXUAL PREDATOR RISK INITIATIVE’ HELP
By Dahn Batchelor

At first blush, the words, Sex-Offender Registry of Ontario gives us a feeling of security and well-being until we look into its purpose with a jaundice eye. It’s purpose is to compel convicted sex offenders to register every year with the police so that wherever the sex offenders reside, the police will always know. The current registry has more than 5,000 names in it. That being as it is, it will be easier for the police to track down convicted sexual predators if they are suspected of re-offending.

Mandatory registration applies to those individuals living in Ontario who were convicted of a sex offence in Canada and who were (a) serving a sentence on the day Christopher's Law was proclaimed or (b) convicted of a sex offence on or after the day the legislation came into force. Other individuals required by law to register are those who have been found not criminally responsible on account of a mental disorder, and who have received an absolute or conditional discharge, on or after the day the legislation came into effect. It should be noted however that if they later apply for a pardon and their application is approved, their names will be removed from the Registry.

In Ontario, this Act is also referred to as Christopher’s Law which was named after 10-year-old Christopher Stephenson who was raped and murdered in 1988 by a sex-offender who was on statutory release from prison at the time. The sex offender was convicted of the murder and later he was murdered while in prison.

On December 11, 2002, Federal Solicitor General Wayne Easter and Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Martin Cauchon introduced similar legislation to implement a national sex offender registration system. It is called the Sex Offenders Registration Information Act.

The backbone of the sex offender registration system is a special new Sex Offender Database on the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) system. The sex offender database will allow police to conduct a search according to a full or partial address and the offence of a sex offender or both. Offence information and registration information will be included, as well as other pertinent identification information such as tattoos, other distinguishing marks and DNA information.

Under the proposed legislation, convicted sex offenders will have to register within 15 days of being released from incarceration. Re-registration would be required annually and within 15 days of a change of residence. Offenders will be required to provide local police with current information such as addresses and telephone numbers, names and alias(es) and identifying marks and tattoos. Penalties will be provided for failing to comply with a registration order or for not giving truthful information. Unfortunately, the data base only includes the names of sex offenders who committed their crimes after the Act came into force.

In the United States, a similar law to the two aforementioned ones is referred to as Meagan’s Law. It was the brutal 1994 rape and murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka in New Jersey that prompted the public demand for broad based community notification. It is applied in all 50 states.

Some of the states have the particulars of the registrees on the Internet. For example, in Delaware, the Sex Offender Central Registry shows the picture of the offender, his or her date of birth, the offender’s current address and a description of the particular sex law that was broken. In Louisiana, the released sexual offender must distribute throughout the area where he intends to live; post cards delivered to every door, giving his name, address and a description of the crime he was convicted of. There was one community in the United States that required the offender to post a sign on his lawn as to who he was and to state that he was a convicted child molester. It should be pointed out however that 20 states are being constitutionally challenged for these kinds of steps made by the American authorities who are using these means as an attempt to cut down recidivism of convicted sex offenders.

Publication of offenders names and addresses and particulars of their offences on the Internet in the United States has resulted in some disastrous results; such as some of them being victims of vigilantes who have committed arson and murder to repunish the offenders.

Some police forces in Canada have publicly announced the whereabouts of released violent sex-offenders after they were released from prison. Manitoba and Alberta even publish on the Internet, the names, last known addresses and particulars of the sexual offences committed by these released prisoners along with their photographs. Manitoba has only published four violent sex offenders on their Website.

The state of Colorado has approached this concept in a different way. They publish the names, photographs and descriptions of the offences of those convicted sex offenders who have not registered as they are required to do. This surely is a good way to ensure that sex offenders register with the local police. It would seem more acceptable to restrict the publishing of the offender’s names and pictures on the Internet to only those who refuse to register with the police. That would amount to about 5 percent of all convicted sexual offenders.
Although statistics show that 65 percent of these offenders will not re-offend, the remaining 35 percent will and for this reason, these Acts have been created.

There are unfortunately, failings in sexual offender registration systems that don’t make public the whereabouts of sex offenders that have been released from prison. For the most part, there is nothing in these systems that makes it possible for potential victims or their families to be warned in advance that a sexual predator is amongst them. The public reaction has been so negative, most of the released sex-offenders exposed thusly have been forced to move time and time again, which makes it more difficult for them to re-enter the community, that which is conducive to rehabilitation. Generally, only the police know where they are. What the police don’t know is what the ex-offenders are up to after their release from prison.

An example of this failing in these kinds of systems occurred in 2002 and it occurred right in my own home. A close friend of mine, a 55-year-old man whom I had known for twenty years, was a regular visitor to our home and in November 2002, I observed that he was becoming all too familiar with my five and a half-year-old granddaughter. I spoke to my daughter and asked her to speak to her daughter to see if my friend was doing anything to her that she considered was improper. She spoke to her daughter and concluded that nothing was amiss. It could be because at that time, nothing was amiss or it could have been because my granddaughter being none the wiser, didn’t think anything was amiss.

A week later my former friend sexually assaulted my granddaughter and left his semen behind in her. Within a day, he was arrested and charged and was in custody awaiting trial for eleven months. The police investigators told my daughter that this particular man was a bad one but I learned at his trial that his one redeeming feature was that he intended to plead guilty to that charge and two other charges relating to two similar incidents that occurred in Toronto thereby sparing the children he abused; the trauma of having to testify in court.

As it turned out, other than some brief pain, my granddaughter was not savagely ravaged. She is her normal self again, even laughing at her own pranks. As time moves on, the experience will hopefully disappear in her mind rather than crop up once in a while to haunt her in her later years.

Before I go on any further, let me add that if the man was a mere acquaintance of mine, I wouldn’t have let him be that familiar with my granddaughter. But the man had been a close friend for twenty years and I knew his wife had left him, his children were grown up and he was lonely. Of course, I didn’t want to believe that he might be a sexual predator. I was obviously too close to my friend to see his behaviour for what it was. As an interesting aspect in all this, both my daughter and I studied criminal law, deviant behaviour, and abnormal psychology for years at the University of Toronto and generally; we can spot conduct like this, and yet we somehow let this one slide by us.

I spoke to a close friend of mine who is a police officer in Toronto that the sexual predator resided in and asked him for some background on his criminal record. My friend apologized and said that he couldn’t give me that information because it was against police policy. When I spoke to the investigating officer in Mississauga where the sexual assault against my granddaughter took place, she too said that she couldn’t give me that information. It’s ironic when you think of it. Both I and my daughter could only learn of this man’s criminal record when he was convicted and it was brought out during his sentencing.

I asked the investigating officer if she would have given me that information before the sexual offence took place if I told her that I was suspicious that he might be a sex offender molesting my granddaughter. She said that she still couldn’t give me that information even under those circumstances. Further, she also didn’t tell me that this man was on bail for two counts of similar charges prior to him sexually assaulting my granddaughter.

Had my granddaughter suffered terribly and been seriously injured as a result of this man’s sexual assault on her, and it was because the police in the community in which we live had previously refused to give me or my daughter information about this man’s other current charges for the same kind of crime, my daughter may very well have sued the police for their failure to look into the matter and warn us of the existence of this sexual predator in our midst.

In the famous Jane Doe case in Toronto in which she was victimized by a serial rapist because the police refused to warn the public of his presence in their midst, the court said in part, “In spite of the knowledge that the police had about this sexual rapist and their decision not to warn, they took no steps to protect Ms. Doe or any other women from this known danger. In the circumstances of this case, the police failed utterly in the duty of care they owed Ms. Doe.” unquote.

I think that same principle applies in cases where a potential victim or the family of such a potential victim makes enquiries to the police about someone whom they suspect may be a sexual predator and who is visiting their home on an ongoing basis and may appear to be acting in an improper manner towards a child.

On October 5, 1999, Citizenship, Culture and Recreation Minister Helen Johns launched the $1.2 million Ontario Screening Initiative (OSI) to safeguard community groups, a program to protect children in sports from sexual abuse or the elderly being subjected to some other form of abuse. She said, "We all want our loved ones to be safe in community programs -- whether it's a child playing soccer or an elderly parent receiving home care." unquote. The program is funded by the Ontario Government and operated by various community groups such as sports organizations, summer camps and church groups etc. The OSI promotes the adoption of safety practices for community groups to use to screen people in positions of trust, such as reference checks, job orientation, training, supervision and monitoring.

Perhaps a similar program might be implemented in Ontario that would protect children at home from sexual predators who come to visit. I envision a group of volunteers in each community, comprising of retired police officers experienced in sexual abuse crimes and retired social workers who have the same kind of experience, who could send a member of their group to interview a potential victim and his or her family and if the volunteer concludes that there may very well be a risk to the child, the volunteer ( who has been approved by the police ) can obtain from the police, information as to whether or not the person being enquired about has a criminal record for sexual crimes or has similar charges pending. Armed with that information, the volunteer could then advise the family that it would not be in the child’s best interests to permit the suspected offender having any contact with the child at any time. This program could be called the Sexual Predator’s Risk Initiative. ( SPRI )

Single mothers whose boyfriends have shown an unusual interest in their children, parents whose children appear to spend a lot of time in single adult’s homes, parents who feel that their children’s friends of the same sex are far too old for their children to be playing with, parents who have suspicions about the conduct of their babysitters or wives who have suspicions about their husbands molesting their children or visa versa; would be the kind of people who would be in need of its services.

The reasons for any parent being suspicious could be that the adult or older child is spending too much time roughhousing with the younger child or is constantly inviting the younger child to sit on his lap, is constantly telling jokes or stories of a sexual nature, is always wanting to be the one to bathe the child in the bathtub, or an adult is constantly giving money or gifts to the child or permitting the child to drink alcohol in the presence of the adult or wants to take the child on overnight camping all the time during the warm months of the year or for sleepovers at his or her house or the child is afraid to be near a particular adult.

The Toronto Sun published a story in its May 27th 2003 edition about a woman who accidentally stumbled on her husband's kiddie porn collection, including pictures of himself naked in the couple's bedroom with a six-year old girl they knew from the neighbourhood. He later admitted to improper touching by the child from September 1998 to June 1999.

She said that looking back at it, she was able to piece together the hints her husband dropped about his secret. She's just sorry she didn't pick up on them sooner. "He knew all the kids in the neighbourhood and I thought at the time it was really cute. I looked at it like practice parenting because we were starting a family." unquote.

If professionals like my daughter and I can be fooled as to the real intentions of a sexual predator in our midst as we were, what about those who are untrained in recognizing sexual deviance in others. Unless something like SPRI is brought about, victims such as my granddaughter and her mother and thousands more like them will only learn of the sexual predator’s intentions after the sexual attacks have been committed on their loved ones and only learn during the sentencing aspect of the predator’s trials, when it is too late, about their children’s sexual predators’ previous sexual criminal history.

As an aside, the molester of my granddaughter was arrested and spent one year in jail awaiting his trial. He was put on probation for three years because the judge felt that since he was beat up in jail and wasn't permitted to attend his father's funeral, and was required to seek psychiatric treatment as a condition of his probation, no further jail time was necesary. I advised the court that I was in agreement with the hudge's decision. Needless to say, my family and I no longer associate with this man and from talking to some of our mutual friends who knew this man, they don't talk with him. He is now on the Canadian list of sex offenders.