COMING SOON TO A TOWN NEAR YOU PROP. 83 MAY CREATE MOLESTER MECCAS.

Byline: SUE DOYLE Staff Writer

SYLMAR -- After learning that 25 registered sex offenders were living in a local motel, Sylmar residents took to the streets, protesting with handmade signs and booming megaphones until state officials relocated the parolees.

Now, some say a proposed measure on the Nov. 7 ballot would create similar clusters of sex offenders in communities around California.

Proposition 83 -- also known as Jessica's Law -- would prohibit registered sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools, parks and similar locations. With communities now striving to make themselves as family-friendly as possible, officials say offenders will find themselves limited to increasingly small areas.

``What we'll see is that remote communities will see a lot more sex offenders, because they won't be able to live in Beverly Hills and around Los Angeles,'' said Bob Stern, head of the Center for Governmental Studies. ``Palmdale, Lancaster and the outskirts will feel the effects.''

Already, Lancaster houses 284 sex offenders, more than twice as many as any San Fernando Valley community except Van Nuys, according to the state's Megan's Law Web site, Palmdale has 164.

And Sylmar, where 25 offenders were housed at the Super 8 Motel, has 127.

``Why are they here in Sylmar? Why are they not in Beverly Hills?'' asked resident Luis Aceves, one of those whose protest last month prompted officials to relocate the offenders from the Roxford Street motel.

Bigger buffer zone 

Under current law, paroled sex offenders cannot live within a quarter-mile or 1,320 feet of schools, while high-risk offenders can't live within a half-mile, or 2,640 feet. All parolees must be returned to the county where they last lived before prison.

Supporters of Jessica's Law say the measure would make children safer by expanding the buffer zone to 2,000 feet and adding parks and other locales specified by local governments.

The measure -- dubbed Jessica's Law after Jessica Lunsford, who was kidnapped and killed in 2005 by a convicted sex offender in Florida -- is supported by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his Democratic opponent, Phil Angelides.

The initiative also would increase penalties for sex offenders and require electronic monitoring for life.

Experts expect the measure to pass easily because the issue ranks high with voters and faces no political opposition.

But Stern predicted outlying desert and central areas would feel its unintended consequences because of residency requirements that would make it difficult for sex offenders to live in urban or suburban areas where schools and parks are plentiful.

Marked in red

Buffer zone maps prepared by the state Office of Demographics show large swaths of land marked off in red that reflect the measure's 2,000-foot residency restrictions. They wipe out much of the urban centers of Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego, but still leave small pockets for sex offenders to live.

Rural areas of the state appear wide open.

The disproportionate number of parolees living in the Antelope Valley is already a concern, said Sgt. Michael Willoughby of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's Lancaster station.

``It's something we're concerned about. We are watching to see what the cities do,'' he said.

``We don't need any more sex offenders living in an area that's already disproportionately populated with sex offenders.''

California is home to nearly 100,000 registered sex offenders. About 9,000 are on parole, with up to 2,500 of them considered high-risk, said Bill Sessa, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman.

Martin O'Neal, regional administrator for the department, which oversees adult parolees, said temporary housing -- like the Sylmar motel -- is frequently used because of the lack of other legal locations in Los Angeles County.

O'Neal said the offenders were living at the Super 8 because they all had previously lived in Sylmar and had nowhere else to go after being paroled.

``It was sort of the best of both worlds, given the fact that nobody wants sex offenders living next door to them,'' he said. ``Since they're everywhere in our community, the safest way to house them is where we know where they're at.''

Outraged residents

But to residents living near the motel, officials couldn't relocate the paroled sex offenders fast enough.

Still outraged, residents are calling for laws that would require paroled sex offenders to be distributed more evenly among all cities in California's 58 counties so no community has to bear the load more than another.

Their cries directly oppose what Proposition 83 would do.

``The big thing with me and with us is to keep that number down,'' said Louis Perry, public service chairman on the Sylmar Neighborhood Council. ``You look at some cities, and there is one (offender). Some have eight. What is wrong there?''

Even if Proposition 83 fails at the polls, Schwarzenegger signed a series of bills in September that increase prison terms for many sex offenders and also prohibit them from loitering at parks and schools.

The bills also require high-risk offenders on parole to be tracked with electronic devices. About 500 are already monitored through Global Positioning Satellite systems, and the state has set aside $13 million to track 2,000 more in the next two years, Sessa said.

Still, Perry said, residents are most fearful of another case like that of Polly Klaas, the 12-year-old who was kidnapped at knifepoint in 1993 during a slumber party at her Petaluma, Calif., home.

Her body was found two months later. Richard Allen Davis, a previously convicted sex offender, was later convicted of her murder and sentenced to death.

Such cases make headlines and fuel fears of abductions by strangers. But experts say those are rare.

About 60 percent of boys and 80 percent of girls who are molested are abused by someone they know, according to the Center For Sex Offender Management, a national project that supports state and local jurisdictions in sex-offender management.

Relatives, friends, baby sitters, soccer coaches -- people in positions of authority over children -- are more likely than strangers to commit sexual assaults, according to the center. But those stories go largely unheard.

In fact, over a three-year period, only 5.3 percent of sex offenders were rearrested for another sex crime, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. The agency also found that sex offenders are less likely than other criminals to be rearrested for any offense.

Waves of panic

But those statistics can't override the waves of panic that have swept across the nation, said Niki Delson, a Humboldt County-based therapist for sex offenders and victims and education chairwoman for the California Coalition on Sexual Offending.

``The way our society is moving is that we want to banish sex offenders,'' Delson said. ``That's where we are culturally, which is not at all based on research in terms of what makes us safer.''

Little impact

Delson said Proposition 83 and similar measures make people feel safer but will ultimately have little impact. Determined predators will live 2,001 feet away from schools and will still find ways to get near children, she said.

The best way to prevent them from reoffending is to bring them back to society, where they can get jobs and resume their lives. At the same time, she said, people should carefully watch them and meet with public officials to learn what they can do to protect their families.

Historically, though, societies have banished people they fear, such as lepers and people with typhoid. Ireland deported criminals during the 1700s to Australia. Sex offenders, it appears, are falling into a similar pattern.

``It's frightening, because it's based on political rhetoric and fear,'' Delson said. ``That kind of fear is political capital. That's very saddening.''

The public frenzy that followed the ``confession'' of John Mark Karr in the JonBenet Ramsey case shows that sex offenders remain a sensationalized topic, said Bernardo Attias, a communications professor at California State University, Northridge.

Although the impending legislation addresses concerns about safety, it also punishes sex offenders after they are released rather than addressing the issue of rehabilitation.

``I think we need to take a closer look about why we are doing this in the first place,'' Attias said. ``If there truly are safety concerns, maybe we should look at how we are sentencing them rather than looking at them after they're out of prison.''

As residents come to grips with sex offenders, O'Neal finds that many believe all registrants are child molesters, which isn't true. But the registry doesn't distinguish between their crimes and leaves room for interpretation.

Perry said it would help if registered sex offenders were ranked by risk level so people will know who is a concern in the neighborhood and who is not.

``You really have to weigh it out. They have to get a grading system, like restaurants have,'' Perry said. ``That will change all of this.''

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SOURCE: Megan's Law Web site

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