The Post-Crescent (Wisconsin)
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Sex offenders gain notice
State’s registry draws criticism and praise after 5 years in action
By John Lee
Post-Crescent staff writer
During the past five years, convicted sex offenders in Wisconsin have carried a heightened public stigma.
More than 13,000 people in the state and more than 450 in the Fox Valley area now have that notoriety.
Their names, area of residence and other personal details are available to the public via a telephone hotline and a Web site, under the Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Law.
Some say the law, which took effect June 1, 1997, unfairly has branded people who already have been punished for their crimes.
But others say that exposure and increased public knowledge about sex offenders means the law is working.
“We are much more aware of sex offenders and are starting to be aware of the dynamics,” said Mary Majerus, a field supervisor with the state Department of Corrections’ Division of Probation and Parole.
She said only 2 percent of the offenders who came out of prison with offenses that require notification have been returned to prison for new offenses. But 35 percent have been returned because of rules violations.
“The true success is prevention,” Majerus said.
However, Connie Schulz of Hortonville said the law has gone too far.
She is a friend of a 36-year-old man who has been held in a treatment facility for 18 years after sexually assaulting two girls who were family friends.
Schulz said sex offenders are branded like the adulteress in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.”
She said public meetings where police notify residents of the release of an offender “create a lot of hysteria.”
The emphasis has been misplaced, Schulz said.
Most sex offenders already know their victims and are not a danger to the neighborhood, she said, while people convicted of other serious crimes are being released without fanfare.
“You should be more afraid of the people you don’t know than the people you know,” she said.
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Appleton Chief of Police Richard Myers, who served on state committees that helped implement the law, said it has done what was expected - closely monitor offenders by providing information about them to police, victims and the public. Myers, whose city is home to 194 registered sex offenders, said vigilantism, a main criticism of the law, has been avoided.
“There has been a strong and deliberate attempt to balance the community rights and the offenders’ rights,” he said.
Eugene Bartman, supervisor of the Appleton office of the state public defender, said the law making the information public has created a potential for violence and vigilantism.
“I don’t know if it made anything worse, but I am skeptical if it has made anything better,” Bartman said.
Majerus said there has been little harassment of offenders in Wisconsin.
People are beginning to understand that most of the offenders victimized relatives, not strangers, she said.
Bartman said he isn’t sure there was a problem that needed to be addressed when the registration law was enacted. It came about after the abduction of Jacob Wetterling, a Minnesota boy.
“Legislation is often passed in reaction to something that may or may not have occurred in the state,” Bartman said.
“It’s usually good politics to pass and good politics to keep unless it ends up costing a lot of money, and this apparently doesn’t,” he said.
Department of Corrections officials said the financial impact of the law is difficult to calculate because it’s administered at different levels and within a larger department framework. Majerus said the law is more than good politics.
“The rules are very strict and the department is very diligent about enforcing them,” she said.
She cited Lee Eiring, who was the subject of community meetings in Appleton and Menasha when he was released from prison. He was sent back when he broke a rule by having contact with a man.
“There are no second chances,” Majerus said.
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In Wisconsin, offenders must register with the state if they were convicted before Dec. 25, 1993, or were in a prison or institution, or being monitored by the state on that date.
Pending federal court cases could affect the law.
Opponents are challenging the retroactive aspect of a similar Alaska law. Another case, accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court last month, challenges laws in a dozen states, including Wisconsin, that allow for publication of personal information about offenders on the Internet.
Sgt. Mike Nofzinger, who coordinates the registration program for the Appleton Police Department, said agencies meet face to face with offenders they register.
Officials file a photo of the criminal; review living arrangements, work schedules, routes to and from work, physical descriptions, such as height, weight, scars, tattoos, facial hair, and even the offender’s brand of cologne; as well as learn about area relatives and close friends.
That information has given Fox Valley police agencies a database that can be used to check for suspects in sex-related and other crimes.
Registrations were checked to eliminate suspects in an August 1999 stabbing of a 23-year-old woman at Hoover Park in Appleton, even though police don’t believe the attack was a sex crime.
Nofzinger said the local and state databases also would have helped area police in the early 1990s, when serial murderer and rapist David Spanbauer was living in Oshkosh and committing burglaries, child abductions, murders and rapes in the Fox Cities.
Having Spanbauer’s photo on file, along with his background, and knowing physical characteristics, such as age and his heavy smoking habit, might have led police to him sooner, Nofzinger said.
“We didn’t have any place to start,” he said. “There was definitely information (on Spanbauer), but there wasn’t any ready-made list to start out with.”
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Nofzinger said there was consternation during the half-dozen community meetings Appleton police held since 1997 to notify residents when potentially dangerous sex offenders were released.
The feeling of citizens is, “they have to live somewhere, but don’t put them in my neighborhood,” he said.
Majerus said people have reacted out of fear. “They think their child is going to be kidnapped or raped or something.”
That has made it difficult for probation and parole agents to find places for offenders to live and work.
“It’s very, very difficult. We are just running around looking, looking, looking,” Majerus said.
“We don’t want to put them just anywhere,” and they can’t be near a school, day care center or park.
“How far away is acceptable? There is always an objection to moving somebody in, unless sometimes they are moving back into a parent’s home and the family has been in the neighborhood a long time.”
Officials try to move offenders into a halfway house or temporary places contracted by the state, where they can be monitored as much as 24 hours a day.
“Some of them have been in these facilities over a year and we still can’t find them a place to live,” Majerus said.
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Victim advocates say the law has helped victims of sexual abuse.
Stephanie Jens, victim witness coordinator for Outagamie County, said victims are taking advantage of this and other laws that entitle them to special information and access.
Victims, for example, can learn when a criminal is being released from prison, and have a right to know things such as living arrangements and employment.
“Victims are taking advantage of meeting with the parole commissioners,” Jens said. “(The laws) give them more say in the court system.”
Some victims have objected when proposed housing for an offender was too near them, and state agents have changed plans, Jens said.
Mary Kleman, director of the Sexual Assault Crisis Center of the Fox Cities Inc., said the law provides peace of mind.
“I think it’s one of those things where information is always a good thing,” she said.
“At least they know where he (the offender) is,” Kleman said. “It gives victims an opportunity to express their concerns about this person going back into the community.”
Majerus said Wisconsin’s law, and the realization that sex crimes must be reported, are keys to making the state safer.
“We’re just at the tip of the iceberg. There’s a whole lot of sex offenders out there we don’t know about and people aren’t reporting.
“This is just the beginning.”
John Lee can be reached at 920-993-1000, ext. 362, or by e-mail at jlee@ postcrescent.com