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Lawrence Greenfeld, Deputy Director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, analyzed a survey of 14,000 state prisoners. His analysis provided some important, yet previously unreported data. • Two-thirds of all offenders serving time in State prison for rape or sexual assault had a victim under age 18. • A majority of the subjects serving time for sex crimes against children had victimized a child age 12 or under. • 3 in ] 0 child victimizers reported that they had committed their crimes against multiple victims • The offender had been drinking alcohol prior to the child molest in neazly 40% of the incidents. A review of several studies conducted during the 1990's provides an in-depth understanding of who the victims of sexual assault are and which sex offenders are more likely to reoffend. The studies included a review of law enforcement reports, data analysis, interviews with state prisoners and a longitudinal study of released state prisoners. Sex registrants aze more likely than other felons to commit a sexual assault and their victims of choice aze usually children. Children also do not have the capacity to protect themselves and aze more easily persuaded to comply with the directions of an adult, even a stranger. Given their vulnerability and their attractiveness to sexual predators, the community demands that children be afforded safe locations to gather. Under current law, sex registrants can sit in a pazk or neaz a school observing children while waiting for the best opportunity to engage a child for a lewd act. Law enforcement officers are powerless to prevent this activity until it is too late. Yet, preventable activity does happen in and azound schools and pazks. Recently, officers from a sex offender task force followed a Santa Ana sex registrant to Los Angeles where the subject was photographed making contact with young boys. He was also photographed pazticipating in a young boy's soccer practice. When the undercover officers interviewed the parents of the boys the sex registrant had contacted, they said the registrant was at the park all the time and described him as "the nicest man". We subsequently arrested the subject for molesting two young boys in the City of Santa Ana (Voight). On another occasion, we received information that a Santa Ana sex registrant was in the process of bringing a foreign bride with a young son into the United States. The sex registrant had previously been convicted of molesting a young boy, so the SAPD Sex Registration unit suspected something inappropriate was occumng. During the investigation, we contacted the aparhnent complex where the subject lived. The apartment manager described the subject as a "nice man" because he was always in the playground playing with the children (Shenkel). It was determined the subject had been providing the police deparhnent with false residence locations. He was arrested for failing to comply with his registration requirement. A third sex registrant (Cortez) was determined to be annoying young girls at a school bus stop. The complaint involved the subject standing neaz the girl's bus stop and yelling lewd comments at the girls and propositioning them. If the adult parents of children contacted by sex registrants are unable to recognize them as dangerous to their child, what chance does a child have to make that judgment? Additionally, the Sexual Assault Unit has conducted two long term investigations involving sex crimes occurring neaz schools and parks. One subject exposed himself to numerous young girls on their way to school, over a one yeaz period, before he was eventually captured. The other subject approached couples in the pazks in Santa Ana and ordered them to participate in sex acts with him at gunpoint before he robbed them and fled the location. Other cities have had similar problems with sexual assaults occurring near schools and parks. On Labor Day, 1993 in Plano, Texas, the Estelle Family was at a local pazk watching their son play in a soccer tournament. Seven year old Ashley Estelle became bored and walked to a playgound a few hundred yards away. Despite the fact many other children were present; Ashley was abducted from the pazk by a convicted sex offender. The sex offender, Michael Blair, had been released from prison after serving 17 months of a 10 year sentence. The City of Santa Ana's objective in enacting a law prohibiting sex registrants from loitering at locations where children congregate is to prevent similaz attacks from occurring. • Page 2 11 A-2