Law Loophole Allows Sex Offenders To Live Near Schools
- May
- 15
7:15 pm Live Sex
One thousand feet, about three city blocks, that’s the distance Missouri sex offenders have to put between their home and schools or daycares.
But of the 8,200 sex offenders in Missouri’s registry, we found many are not following that law.
Some are so close they can look out their windows and see kids in class.
And there’s nothing law enforcement officers can do about that.
Monday through Friday at 3:30 p.m., you’ll likely find Ann Haines and her eight-year-old son making their way home from Westport Elementary School.
Their walk was a short one on this day, only to the car parking lot, but some days Ann leaves the car at home.
“We have walked, we have other kids that walk by themselves so we try to keep an eye on them when walking with us,†says Haines.
She used to worry about the traffic, but there’s another risk three doors down from the school that Ann and other parents didn’t even know about.
So we knocked on the door of that home, which is much closer than one thousand feet from Westport Elementary.
The man living there said to us, “I’m not a sex offender!”
Even thought the sex offender registry shows he was convicted of sexually abusing an eight-year-old girl in Clarksville Arkansas.
And he’s not the only offender with a home near a Springfield school.
Another sex offender lives closer than a thousand feet from Bingham elementary and he was convicted of making lewd and indecent proposals to a 13- year-old in Oklahoma.
Two more live across the street from Glendale High School. One was convicted of sexual abuse of a 15-year-old in Arkansas.
The other was convicted of aggravated sexual assault of a 12-year-old in Texas.
Another man convicted of raping a 5-year-old in Washington lives about 250 feet from Study Middle School.
But, none of those men have to abide by the Missouri law banning sex offenders from living within one thousand feet of a school because they committed their crimes out of state.
Greene County Chief Deputy Jim Arnott says, “The way Missouri law reads, you have to be convicted of a Missouri charge, so if you’re convicted in Oklahoma of a sex crime, we couldn’t enforce it because it’s not a Missouri law.  I would call it a loophole.â€
â€A lot of our sex offenders who live in Missouri are from out of state,” explained Greene County Assistant Prosecutor Ami Miller. “So they don’t have to comply with that rule.”
“I think it’s nonsensical,” added Barbara Brown, Executive Director of the Child Advocacy Center. “If that person was a threat to children in Illinois or California or Arkansas then that person’s probably a threat to children in Missouri.”
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