Pedophiles put on notice
Morcombes, Hinch step up bid for register
DANIEL Morcombe’s parents have sent a warning to convicted child sex offenders – “the worst of the worst” – that their days of living anonymously in Australian communities are numbered.
Bruce and Denise Morcombe issued a public plea yesterday for more Australians to support their call for a public child sex offender registry.
The register would identify convicted pedophiles by name and photo and publish their general location and a list of their crimes.
More than 150,000 people have already signed the petition for Daniel’s Law to establish the register.
Senator Derryn Hinch, who launched the petition in a bid to pressure the major parties to act, said the time was right to introduce a national register given the Turnbull government had backed his call to ban child sex tourism.
The trio is pushing for a simple app, along with the register, that allows families to see if sex offenders live in their suburb.
Re-launching the petition in Parliament House, Canberra, Mrs Morcombe said Daniel’s Law would honour her son’s memory.
“We think it may have helped Daniel 14 years ago if this sort of policy was out there,” she said.
“Daniel’s perpetrator may have said ‘Well, I won’t go down that road at all’.”
The couple, who has campaigned fiercely for the register since their son’s abduction and murder in 2003, also issued a direct warning to pedophiles.
“Your name will be up online for what you have done to children,” Mr Morcombe said. “You are the worst of the worst.
“You need to understand that these crimes have implications on children for the rest of their lives. So too, your actions need to be recorded for the rest of your life.”
Mr Hinch attempted to head off concerns a register might endanger the lives of convicted sex offenders who had served their sentences.
“To the civil libertarians who bleat on about it, I have a very simple answer: you rape a child, you lose your civil rights,” he said.
But he also highlighted that Americans “weren’t throwing molotov cocktails” at the homes of sex offenders on the US register, which had published their name, photo, crimes and home address for two decades.
“The people who lived in the area knew that a sex offender lived there and your kids didn’t go doorknocking there for trick-ortreating on Halloween,” Mr Hinch said.
“If your ball went over the fence, Dad went in and got it and you didn’t go in yourself.”
Mr Hinch said the Turnbull government had indicated to him, while drafting laws to ban pedophiles from travelling overseas to abuse children, it would introduce further measures to crack down on sex crimes this year.