LINCOLN, Maine — Town leaders have repealed portions of a 5-year-old town sex offender ordinance that Town Manager Lisa Goodwin said Tuesday was so restrictive it probably was unenforceable.
The Town Council voted 7-0 during a meeting Monday night to approve changes in the ordinance that will bring it more in line with state laws when the changes go into effect in 30 days, Goodwin said.
“We were not in compliance with state law,” Goodwin said Tuesday of the ordinance, which was enacted in late December 2006. “If we tried to enforce what we had on the books, then the people [arrested or cited] would have had a case against us. We would not have had a case.”
Under the ordinance, sex offenders were forbidden to live within 1,500 feet of schools, state-licensed day care or preschool centers or within 1,000 feet of libraries, public parks, movie theaters or public playgrounds.
The ordinance also created an additional 1,000-foot boundary around those perimeters in which offenders could not loiter or stay except as part of “legitimate activity.” Violators could have faced fines of $100 per offense, with a $1,000 limit.
The revisions councilors approved on Monday reduced the 1,500-foot boundary to 750 feet and restricted its application to schools or town-owned playgrounds where “children are the primary users.”
It eliminated the ordinance’s ban on sex offenders being allowed to “stop, sit, stand, or loiter within a Red Zone for any period of time exceeding the amount of time reasonably necessary to engage in a legitimate activity within such zone and then only for the period of time when they are actually engaged in that legitimate activity.”
Another section of the law councilors voted to eliminate had prohibited offenders from being able to “lurk, stalk, loiter, threaten, solicit or communicate with children in any area of the community,” including bus stops.
Local police had not enforced the ordinance since Lincoln Police Chief William Lawrence joined the department in April. He said he could not speak to what was done before his arrival.
Town leaders were likely following a 2006 model and a natural desire to protect residents from harm when they crafted the ordinance, but a state law change in 2009 that relaxed sex offender restrictions forced towns to follow suit, said Lawrence, who studied the town’s ordinance for several weeks and recommended the changes.
As of Tuesday, 15 offenders were listed at Lincoln’s ZIP Code, 04457, at the state’s sex offender website, sor.informe.org/sor/. The town typically averages nine to 11 offenders, Lawrence said.
I think we should amend the sex offender law to say that you cannot live within 500 miles of the capitol building. That would fix all of this. :-)
How about 500 miles from ANY capitol?
Do you mean all sex offenders, or just the 5 to 10 percent who get reported and convicted?
If you mean all, there will not be too many folks left in any town.
Residency restrictions are a failed idea, they should never have passed in the first place.
Great 1st start towards restorative justice, I can’t wait to see them tackle the problem of law enforcement sex offenders.
FBI Agent Pleads Guilty to Child Abuse
Tuesday February 17, 2004 11:46 PM
By JOHN SOLOMON
Associated Press Writer
https://antipolygraph.org/cgi-bin/forums/YaBB.pl?num=1077052156
WASHINGTON (AP) – The former chief internal watchdog at the FBI has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 6-year-old girl and has admitted he had a history of molesting other children before he joined the bureau for what became a two-decade career.
John H. Conditt Jr., 53, who retired in 2001, was sentenced last week to 12 years in prison in Tarrant County court in Fort Worth, Texas, after he admitted he molested the daughter of two FBI agents after he retired. He acknowledged molesting at least two other girls before he began his law enforcement career, his lawyer said.
5th read
Monday August 8, 2005 Longtime FBI agent sentenced to prison on child porn count
http://www.fbi.gov/kansascity/press-releases/2010/kc033110.htm
also see http://www.policeone.com/news/113935-Longtime-Idaho-FBI-Agent-Sentenced-for-Possessing-Child-Porn/
By JOHN MILLER
Associated Press Writer
BOISE, Idaho (AP) A longtime FBI agent who helped arrest mountain-man Claude Dallas and was involved in a deadly 1984 siege involving white supremacists in Washington state is going to prison for 12 months after pleading guilty to possession of child pornography.
William Buie, 64, of Boise, most recently worked as an investigator for the Idaho attorney general’s office.
6th read
February 22, 2007
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2007/022007/02232007/262383
SPOTSYLVANIA, Va. A F.B.I. analyst has been sentenced to seven years in prison for having sex with a young girl in Spotsylvania County.
Forty-four-year-old Anthony John Lesko entered an Alford plea yesterday in Spotsylvania County Circuit Court to nine counts of felony indecent liberties upon a child. An Alford plea means Lesko doesn’t admit guilt but believes there is enough evidence for a conviction.
Authorities say Lesko engaged in a sex act with her nine times, beginning when she was nine years old.
According to the plea, Lesko said he was a victim in the case. He said the girl initiated the contact.
7th read
FBI Agent Accused Of Masturbating In Public
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2010/12/ex-fbi_agent_sentenced_to_pris.html
May 25, 2007 09:02 PM
FBI Agent Accused Of Masturbating In Public
Posted by, Marissa Pasquet KOLD News 13 News Editor
FBI Special Agent Ryan Seese, 34, is facing sex offense charges after a cleaning woman said she found him masturbating in a women’s lavatory on campus, according to a University of Arizona police spokesman.
8th read
FBI agent arrested on child sexual assault charge
Associated Press – January 15, 2008 6:14 PM ET
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_7978377
PUEBLO, Colo. (AP) – An FBI agent is under arrest in Pueblo for investigation of sexual assault on a child by someone in a position of trust.
Authorities say 53-year-old David Allan Johnson is being held in the Pueblo County jail today on a $100,000 bail.
9th read
Former Great Falls FBI agent sentenced on child sex charges
Jan 23, 2008
A man from Great Falls who’s accused of sexually assaulting five underage girls will be spending the next 10 years behind bars.
Stanley Perkins, 64, changed his plea to guilty after police began investigating him for child molestation in August 2006.
The former educator, who also served two years as an FBI agent, was sentenced on one count of felony sexual assault.
Why is it that you never go after clergymen, bankers, teachers, mechanics or some other profession other than law enforcement. You spend so much time on your soapbox against law enforcement it must be almost worn out.
The only person it seems worn out for is you, does that make you a law enforcement pedophile collaborator? Why are you protecting them? Who are you to tell me what kind of pedophiles to go after? Why are you protecting them?
Do I have a problem as a voter and taxpayer , with people hired to protect me and my family
do I have a problem when they rape my 10 year old daughter while getting funded by my tax dime? You betcha. I feel sorry for you that this is not a problem for you or the moonbats down in Augusta.
What is especially egregious is when the head of the FBI Child abuse program FBI agent Rodgers is identified by his three daughters as having sex with them since they were 2 years old.
see story below
Child Porn Probe Leads To FBI Headquarters
Target claims inquiry is just a “misunderstanding”
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/investigation/child-porn-probe-leads-fbi-headquarters
JANUARY 5 2011–The government’s pursuit of suspects trafficking in child pornography recently led federal agents to a familiar address–the FBI’s Washington, D.C. headquarters, where a bureau official is the subject of an ongoing criminal probe, The Smoking Gun has learned.
The investigation by the Department of Justice’s inspector general is focusing on FBI employee Joseph Bonsuk’s receipt of nearly 80 illicit images that were e-mailed to him by an Illinois sex offender whose rap sheet includes felony convictions for bank robbery and solicitation of a minor.
Prosecutors move to dismiss charges against former Scout leader
January 3, 2007
NEW HAVEN, Conn. –Federal prosecutors have moved to dismiss charges against a retired FBI agent who was indicted on child sex charges dating back more than a decade when he was a Boy Scout leader, in response to the death of his accuser.
William Hutton, 63, of Killingworth, was arrested in February on charges he enticed a member of his Scout troop to Maine for the purpose of sexual activity in 1994 and 1995.
3rd read
http://www.headwatersproductions.com/press/article5.html
Edward Rodgers was in charge of investigating cases of Child Abuse at the FBI
THE DENVER POST – Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire
May 17, 1990
Sisters win sex lawsuit vs. dad $2.3 million given for years of abuse
By Howard Prankratz
Denver Post Legal Affairs Writer
Two daughters of former state and federal law enforcement official Edward Rodgers were awarded $2.319,400 yesterday, after a Denver judge and jury found that the women suffered years of abuse at the hands of their father.
The award to Sharon Simone, 45, and Susan Hammond, 44, followed testimony of Rodgers’ four daughters in person or through depositions, describing repeated physical abuse and sexual assaults by their father from 1944 through 1965.
Rodgers, 72, who became a child abuse expert after retiring from the FBI and joining the colorado Springs DA’s office, failed to appear for the trial. But in a deposition taken in March, Rodgers denied ever hitting or sexually abusing his children.