Pursuit of Ohio sex offenders falls short

Most counties aren’t using available funds to get those who fled Ohio.

DAYTON — Convicted sex offenders have found a way to avoid mandatory laws that force them to register with authorities on a regular basis: leave the state, knowing that authorities might not track them down to face charges for failure to register.

It happens even though federal funds are available for authorities to pursue sex offenders when they flee to other states.

Ohio Attorney General Mike Dewine set up a program in April 2011 to reimburse counties for the cost of bringing sex offenders back to Ohio when they try to thwart registration laws. But last year, few were pursued by counties that could use the money from the U.S. Justice Department.

“We are concerned about the fact that only 22 have been brought back under this program,” Dewine said. “We would love to have more counties come forward to use this money to put these sex predators behind bars.”

Of the $100,000 available at the start of the program, only $30,000 has been used.

Ohio has 19,050 registered sex offenders and 10,527 of them were involved in offenses against children.

Dewine recently identified more than 100 offenders being sought out of state and announced plans to become more aggressive in pursuit of those who refuse to comply with registration laws.

“We are really going to concentrate on putting resources together to get them,” Dewine said.

Only 13 counties used the pursuit funds

Shelby County Sheriff John Lenhart said authorities across the nation too often take the attitude that once offenders cross state lines they are someone else’s problem.

“When these people are out of compliance they are hunting your kids and your grandkids to sexually assault them,” Lenhart said.

Shelby County was one of only 13 Ohio counties in 2011 to make use of the federally funded Source: Shelby County Sheriff’s Office program. It pays up to $2,000 per offender to cover the cost of returning those who have fled.

Last year deputies discovered that sex offender Jason Johnson, 26, no longer was living at his mother’s home in Sidney, which was his registered address.

“They do not want us to find them and that is part of the problem why they move around so much,” said Det. Cori Steiner of the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office.

When Johnson was picked up by police in Colorado on a warrant from Ohio, deputies went there and brought him back to face charges of failure to register. He now is serving a one-year prison sentence at the Southeastern Correctional Facility near Lancaster.

Authorities in many other counties have not been aggressive in pursuing sex offenders who go out of state, according to Lenhart, due to manpower, money and other priorities.

“We have to go after them,” he said. “We have to enforce that.”

Butler County used the fund in December to extradite Patricia Dye, 32, from Humboldt, Calif. Dye was desginated a sex offender after being convicted of posing as a boy to have a sexual relationship with a teenage girl. She served six months in prison, but then moved from Butler County last year without re-registering her new address.

Some victims of sexual assault feel as though men who do not pay child support are a much higher priority that sex offenders. Angelica Lee, 32, was sexually assaulted by her stepfather from ages 3 to 17. “I know people in Ohio that have been sex offenders who have moved to another state and started over,” said Lee, who lives in northeast Ohio. “Nobody follows them.”

She supports more aggressive tracking of offenders, who have three days to register with another county or state when they move, according to the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office.

Lee said if authorities do not return those offenders who violate registration laws, it will only mean more problems. “They play huge games with the system,” said Bill Taylor, senior inspector for the U.S. Marshals Service. “They know how many days to live in a certain spot before they have to tell Ohio that they’ve moved.”

Taylor has been instrumental in returning offenders to Ohio from as far away as Mexico. He compares a sex offender on the loose to a bullet fired into a crowd. “He’s looking for a target, and if someone is unfortunate enough to get in his way, he re-offends.”

Some are caught before they find another victim. Darke County put out a warrant for Jason Graham, a Tier 3 sex offender. Tier 3 is considered the most dangerous category and under Ohio law those offenders must register their addresses with authorities every 90 days for the rest of their lives.

When deputies learned that Graham was not living at the Union City address he had registered, they issued a warrant and began their search. Graham was found by police in Florida when he became involved in an altercation. He was returned to Ohio to face a charge of failure to register.