Woman outraged that sex offender neighbor not on public database

[The Straight Story]

BEAVERTON, Ore. – When a woman found out a convicted rapist lives right next door to her, she became outraged and terrified.

"I find it disturbing and frankly disgusting," the woman told KATU News under the condition of anonymity.

There are 25,000 convicted sex offenders in Oregon. Of those 25,000 offenders, more than 23,000 get to live mostly private lives. You won't find their names or addresses in any public database.

The man the woman is concerned about is Donald Tornquist. In Washington 20 years ago, he assaulted and raped a child under 12 years old. He pled guilty, served a decade in prison and registered as a sex offender.

When Tornquist lived in Washington, you could find him listed in the sex offender database. When he moved to Oregon, he registered with police but you’ll find no trace of him on the state police sex offender website.


http://www.katu.com/news/local/Woman-outraged-sex-offender-neighbor-not-on-public-database-217683061.html

[Nye Bevan]

1. I'm with the woman on this one. The guy raped a child.

If a child rapist lived next door to me I would expect to not only be able to find him on the database, but also be informed prior to him moving there.

[Xithras]

13. If you read through the comments, he was 14 and she was 12

Still a crime, and one for which he was convicted and served his time.

I tend to agree with the Oregon law as it is written. The sex offender listings were created to alert you to people who might be a danger to you or your children...aka predatory sex offenders. In cases like this one, if the chance of reoffense is no greater than the population in general, then there is no point in listing them.

[Nye Bevan]

15. OK, that does make a difference. But I think I would still want to know, in this case.

If it had been a 17 year old and a 15 year old I don't think his name should be on the register (I don't think a case like that should even be prosecuted). But 12 is very young.

[Xithras]

16. I'd have a bigger problem with the face that it was rape, and not the age of the victim.

It sounds like the sex was forced, so nothing changes the fact that he was a 14 year old rapist. It DOES, however, put him in a different criminal class than a 40 year old who rapes a 12 year old. It also introduces the reality that immature 14 year olds can be rehabilitated and turned away from this kind of behavior.

My point was simply that the courts have decided that he's not a predator or a danger to anyone, so he's not on the list. Being on the list is supposed to be a WARNING, and if someone isn't a threat, they shouldn't be on the list. Including everyone simply dilutes the value of the list by allowing the truly dangerous predators to hide among the tens of thousands of convicted offenders who aren't a risk. I would rather the lists show me the people who are DANGERS to my children, than show me everyone who made the mistake of peeing on a fence or sleeping with a police officers underage daughter.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Sex offender registries have proved more harmful than helpful overall.

There are no reputable studies showing that the registries have decreased the rate of sexual offending. In fact, registries and similar restrictive laws may make things worse by making it harder for sex offenders who have served out their sentences to re-integrate into society, get jobs, find a place to live, etc.

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- The sparkling blue waters off Miami's Julia Tuttle Causeway look as if they were taken from a postcard. But the causeway's only inhabitants see little paradise in their surroundings.

Five men -- all registered sex offenders convicted of abusing children -- live along the causeway because there is a housing shortage for Miami's least welcome residents.

"I got nowhere I can go!" says sex offender Rene Matamoros, who lives with his dog on the shore where Biscayne Bay meets the causeway.

The Florida Department of Corrections says there are fewer and fewer places in Miami-Dade County where sex offenders can live because the county has some of the strongest restrictions against this kind of criminal in the country.

Florida's solution: house the convicted felons under a bridge that forms one part of the causeway.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/04/05/bridge.sex.offenders/

[Nuclear Unicorn]

3. Don't rape children. Problem solved.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Nor rape anyone else.

Yup. That would solve the problem.

Thanks for the brilliant insight.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

6. How much sympathy am I required to maintain on behalf of people who rape child?

What next, a sob story about incarcerated criminals complaining they don't get to see their families as often as they used to?

[Logical]

18. So I know a rapist is next door but not a murderer? Idiotic! n-t

[Nuclear Unicorn]

27. List both.

[Logical]

30. WTF? What state lists murderers? n-t

[Nuclear Unicorn]

31. I didn't say they did. I'm saying I'm not opposed to listing violent felons, sexual or otherwise. nt

[Mr. David]

4. It is true. I think the stigma stays with the person as long as that person is on the list.

To continue to be "punished" after that person has served his time and is fully rehabilitated, is not fair. It should be reserved exclusively for true sexual predators.

[Pelican]

7. There is no rehabilitation from an actual sexual predator

Obviously not the pee on a wall type but the child raping kind.

If you ever get "well" enough to realize what you did was wrong how could you do anything but hang yourself for the betterment of mankind?

[NuclearDem]

9. Cognitive behavioral therapy and group therapy actually do work.

Nearly everyone convicted of a sex offense is going to be ordered by the court to participate in some sort of psychological therapy during their time in prison and after release. It's partly why the recidivism rate is so low.

Facts aside, your "sex offenders should hang themselves" is a perfect example of the paranoia and uninformed nonsense that drives legislators to make completely ineffective registries like these in the first place.

[Dash87]

19. The "just shoot 'em all!" mentality just makes things worse.

Interestingly enough, I have yet to see proof that RSO can't be rehabilitated. You would think that they would have an almost 100% reincarceration rate if that were the case.

What is it about RSO that drives us to such irrationality? Is it because it's another way to distance ourselves from a dark and evil aspect of humanity? Just blow it off as an untreatable evil, or "out of sight, out of mind?"

I'm not saying all RSO can be rehabilitated, but I believe many can be or have been. I'm not saying feel sorry for them, but curing them (or at least making them less dangerous) improves society as a whole.

Wanting them to die is bloodthirsty and helps nobody - society is worse off from it.

[NuclearDem]

8. +10000

Sex offender registries don't do any good in protecting the community or the registrant. All it does is make the individual more likely to feel isolated and have to turn to illegal means to support themselves when they can't find work.

If sex offenders reoffending was an epidemic, I could maybe understand the purpose of the registry, but I think the latest statistics here in Indiana put sex offenders reoffending at 12% over five years--and that number includes all crimes. Only 2% of that 12% commit another sex offense (and since "failure to register" is counted as a sex offense in Indiana, that even further lowers the numbers of victim-based crimes).

[Nye Bevan]

10. If you had kids, would you do anything differently if you knew a child rapist lived next door?

Do you think that knowledge would be in any way helpful?

[trumad]

11. Me thinks thou who protest ---errr up above...have no kids.

I'd be pissed if a fucking child rapist lived next door and it wasn't reported.

[loli phabay]

14. darn tooting.

[NuclearDem]

12. Easy solution: don't leave my kids unsupervised around strangers and tell them to be cautious

Frankly, I'd be more concerned with having a neighbor with a history of reckless driving, gun-related crimes or dealing drugs, since they are astronomically more likely to put children in danger than low-risk sex offenders who reoffend sexually at a rate of a fraction of a percent.

[sofa king]

17. I don't want to sound like a dick, but...

... I think that knowledge would be much more likely to cause harm than to help.

I don't think it is wise or fair to provide that information to the parent. I think most parents would act disproportionately and irrationally to such information--to the detriment of their own children and to the sex offender.

If the recidivism examples given by other posters above are true--apparently less than one percent?!--then we already have a rather firm Constitutional duty to leave sex offenders alone after they have served their debt to society.

The fact that they continue to be punished perpetually by being added to sex offender lists speaks more to the illusion of freedom and the rule of law in our society than it does to anything else.

I would also like to point out that if we're going to be making offender lists, why in the hell don't we have an automobile thief list, and other lists of offenders guilty of crimes that are commonly repeated by those convicted like mugging, burglary, and weapons trafficking (yes, weapons trafficking has a 70% recidivism rate, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics) ?

Car thieves have a recidivism rate of around seventy-percent. Wouldn't you like to know that you have a car thief living next door to your '69 COPO Camaro? Because that guy is nearly two orders of magnitude more likely to steal your car than a convicted sex offender is likely to harm your children.

The reason most people don't want that is because they can successfully separate their emotional reaction from their rational thoughts on the subject. Parents--maybe especially the good parents--probably cannot do that about sex offenders.

[JVS]

20. Wait, why can't we have mugger and car thief lists?

[NuclearDem]

23. Oh, I see what you're getting at.

[joeglow3]

26. He asked a question and I offered a solution

He asked why one activity and not two others. I offered up a study that may give hime his answer.

[NuclearDem]

29. No, you blatantly misrepresented what he was talking about.

No one here is arguing that rape and sexual assault are somehow less traumatizing than mugging or carjacking. What we are arguing is that if the registry exists to help people protect themselves from being the victim of a crime, then why aren't the people convicted of crimes with high degrees of recidivism not listed while those with statistically-negligible rates are?

[JVS]

24. Why should she decide how much I know about the risk my neighbors pose to my car?

[joeglow3]

25. So, u believe in an all or nothing solution? Black or white? Zero tolerance? No thinking involved?

If someone who anally raped multiple children needs to register, why shouldn't the kid who ate a grape at the grocery store?

I can only assume you are intentionally being obtuse.

[JVS]

28. Maybe you should do less assuming and answer my question.

Is there a reason why we don't have registries for these other crimes?

That's what I want to know. But you decided that I must have some hidden agenda by asking the question.

[NuclearDem]

22. Depending on the state, year, and specific study, SOs have a recidivism rate of anywhere from

less than 1% to 5% with regards to new sex offenses. And those rates have actually decreased over time.

And absolutely good point about registering all criminals. If parents should be notified about sex offenders, shouldn't business owners be notified about people with histories of burglary, or drivers notified about people with DUIs and reckless driving? They all have compelling interests in knowing, and they're actually more likely to be the victim of one of those offenders.