Concentration of sex offenders is worrisome
Commentary
Barbara Carmen, The Columbus Dispatch, October 11, 2004

Abundant Love Tabernacle is, indeed, a place of plenty: Plenty of love. Plenty of faith. Plenty of sexual predators in the house it owns next door.

The church’s white-frame rental at 881 S. Champion Ave. has four bedrooms, three rapists and one guy convicted of gross sexual imposition.

A small number of understanding landlords in Franklin County accept —even recruit — rapists and molesters as tenants. As a result, several houses and small apartment buildings are packed with predators.

This startled child activist Bret Vinocur, founder of www.findmissingkids.com. While scanning Web sites run by the Franklin County sheriff’s office and the Ohio attorney general, he noticed that certain addresses looked familiar.

" I couldn’t believe it," Vinocur said. "I’m concerned when a private landlord is loading up predators in buildings a half mile from an elementary and a half mile from a middle school.

" I guess, in a way, you could call that a halfway house."

Landlords call it business. Felons call it a lucky find.

" There’s no place for these guys to go. They have very limited options," landlord Gordon R. Rankin said.

Predators cannot live near a school and often hold low-paying jobs that restrict them to low-rent neighborhoods.

Rankin and two other landlords said that despite their initial concerns, these tenants are clean, quiet, employed and grateful.

" These are guys who know they’re under the microscope," Rankin said. "They just want to be invisible."

Another landlord told me he gives "apartment for rent" fliers to current tenants to distribute at group therapy sessions. However, Rankin gets tenants by word of mouth. As a result, his two buildings with apartments renting for $350 a month are fairly full.

The building at 3205 Joan Rd. has seven predators. The one at 180 N. Sylvan Ave. has four.

New tenants, including a few women, are always told of their neighbors’ pasts. Many have been accepting. One nut job actually phoned to ask if a predator could baby-sit. She got his name off a neighbor-notification letter.

Neighbors also haven’t complained to John J. Gallick, whose house at 1021 Bryden Rd. is home to three sexual predators who rent efficiency units.

" Landlords aren’t allowed to discriminate," Gallick said. "These guys aren’t really around. They’re working at their jobs. No idle hands here."

Sexual offenders have the same rate of returning to prison — 1 in 3 — as other criminals. Only one in 10 commits another sexual offense, according to a state corrections study.

These are good odds — until more than 10 move next door.

Staci Kitchen, executive director of the Ohio Coalition on Sexual Assault, is concerned about concentrated living arrangements.

" Depending on what kind of (treatment) programming and supervision they’re getting . . . that sounds like a recipe for disaster," Kitchen said. "But it doesn’t surprise me because there are major issues in housing. Some (predators) are going to nursing homes or homeless shelters."

Or moving next door.

A three-bedroom house at 997 Oakwood Ave. has five sexual predators or offenders listed as living there. The owner, New World Real Estate Consultants, said it sublets the house and couldn’t comment.

Vinocur wonders about this:

" Most guys who live in apartment buildings get together and play video games and watch football. What the heck are these guys doing? I cannot see anything positive here. I don’t even think it’s good for the sex offender."

The Ohio Adult Parole Authority says it keeps close tabs on the 1,100 sexual predators and offenders registered in Franklin County. The ex-cons get therapy, weekly home visits and checks to make sure they aren’t breaking any rules of their parole.

But recent court decisions have sped the early release of convicts, worsening a housing shortage. So predators often look for people like Michelle, of Abundant Love Tabernacle.

" She has a program specifically designed for sexual predators," the Rev. Robert Taylor explained. A house came with the church’s new building, and it saw an opportunity for a ministry.

One resident even joined the church. Let us all pray.