Sex
offender registry doesn't reveal all
By Terri Hallenbeck
Free Press Staff Writer
MONTPELIER -- Six months
ago, Vermont started an Internet sex offender registry
designed to alert communities to convicted sex offenders
living nearby. So why didn't Gerald Tyrone Montgomery's
neighbors know about his past?
That's the question Rick
Tyler, who lives down the street from Montgomery, was asking
Tuesday after police charged his neighbor with raping and
killing a 31-year-old Burlington woman.
"I didn't know
he was a sexual offender," Tyler said. "He wouldn't have been
allowed in my house if I knew."
Tyler, like other
neighbors, presumed police would notify him if a sex offender
lived nearby. In reality, not all sex offenders are on the
Internet registry, nor are police authorized to alert the
community about offenders whose crimes fall below a certain
threshold.
When lawmakers created the online registry
last year after the killing of a Barre teenager, they had to
walk a fine line between notifying the public and subjecting
offenders to potential vigilantism, said Sen. John Campbell,
D-Windsor, chairman of a committee appointed by the
Legislature that has been studying the issue since
summer.
"It's a delicate balancing act," Campbell
said.
"The unfortunate reality is that the sex-offender
registry is not the end-all and be-all," said Sarah Kenney of
the Vermont Network Against Domestic Violence and Sexual
Assault. "I think it's an important tool."
The state's
Internet sex-offender registry lists 144 people. Montgomery is
not one of them.
His conviction for lewd and lascivious
conduct in a 1996 case and his 1999 failure to comply with the
registry did not qualify him for the online list of offenders
accessible to the public, said Max Schleuter, director of the
Vermont Criminal Information Center.
That list is
intended for only the most serious offenders -- those
convicted of aggravated sexual assault; kidnapping and sexual
assault of a child; a repeat sex offense against children;
those who have an outstanding warrant for not complying with
the requirements of the registry; and those who have been
designated by a court as sexual predators.
Montgomery's
name is among the 2,205 people on the sex-offender registry
available to police. The list provides police with details
such as an offender's convictions, his address and whether
he's under Corrections Department supervision, Schleuter
said.
The public can inquire whether someone is on that
list, but only by name. Schleuter said the department receives
inquiries from people wanting to know whether anyone on a
certain street is on the list, but the department cannot
provide that information.
As an advocate for sex crime
victims, Kenney would have preferred to see the registry
include more crimes and give police more specific guidance
about when they can release information about
offenders.
People should remember that offenders
frequently end up being convicted of a lesser offense than the
original charge, Kenney said. Montgomery was convicted of lewd
and lascivious conduct after a hung jury could not decide on
more serious sexual assault charges, said Chittenden County
State's Attorney Robert Simpson. Burlington Police Detective
Shawn Burke said in court papers that Montgomery was
investigated but not prosecuted for the rape of an 18-year-old
woman in Burlington, which resulted in his pleading guilty to
failure to comply with the registry.
Campbell, whose
committee will soon issue a report on the online registry's
effectiveness, said the group concluded it's too early to tell
but that the public seems to feel safer knowing the registry
exists.
Forty-seven other states have online
sex-offender registries. Some include all sex offenders,
Campbell said. Others, like Vermont's, include only certain
offenders.
A 1995 study in Washington state found that
community notification of high-level offenders had little
impact on their likelihood of committing a new crime, but that
new crimes committed by those offenders were solved more
quickly, he said.
Staff Writers Andy Netzel and Jill Fahy
contributed to this report. Contact Terri Hallenbeck at
229-9141 or thallenb@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com
Information
For information about Vermont's sex
offender registry, go to www.dps.state.vt.us/cjs/s_registry.htm
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