SUNBURY — Jeff Thompson can’t walk down his street without running afoul of Sunbury law.
The 46-year-old city resident lives on North Seventh Street, too near a bus stop to take his dog around the block without facing jail time, too close to a day care to consider strolling to the grocery store without being locked up.
When Thompson was convicted of possession of child pornography almost 10 years ago, his picture was posted to the Megan’s Law Web site. And though the state does not deem Thompson a sexually violent predator or put any limit on where he cannot go, a city ordinance makes the majority of Sunbury off-limits to Thompson and anyone else listed under Megan’s Law, regardless of the seriousness of their crimes.
The ordinance, adopted in 2006, states that if Thompson “loiters” (the city’s definition of loitering includes “strolling in, near or upon”) within 1,000 feet of a school, bus stop, child-care facility, day-care center, recreation area, community center, park, playground, arcade, movie theater, athletic field, public library, skate park, public tennis court, pool, ice rink, YMCA, homeless shelter, motel or bed-and-breakfast, he will be thrown in prison for up to 60 days and slapped with a $500 fine.
Sunbury’s law is unheard of and unconstitutional, according to an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.
“I don’t know of another statute in Pennsylvania that tells convicted sex offenders they can’t stand outside the YMCA,” said Mary Catherine Roper, staff lawyer with the ACLU of Pennsylvania.
Also, Roper said, Sunbury deems anyone listed on the Megan’s Law Web site a sexual predator, completely disregarding the state’s distinction between sexual predators and sex offenders.
Of the 22 people who live or work in Sunbury who are listed on the Megan’s Law page, not one is classified as a sexual predator.
“For Sunbury to decide it’s going to ignore the state law on that designation, and instead create its own law that has nothing to do with the kind of careful balancing efforts the state has done to identify who actually is a danger, makes no sense,” Roper said.
Thompson, too, wonders why the city fails to make that distinction. The state allowed him to adopt a child after he’d served his jail time, he reasons, so why won’t Sunbury allow him to take that child to the playground?
“Sunbury’s ordinance is way out of line,” Thompson said. “Federal and state guidelines dictate what I can and cannot do, and what the city is saying is that the wishes of City Council trump those guidelines.
“If that’s not ridiculous, I don’t know what is.”
Sunbury Mayor Jesse Woodring said the law is well-intentioned.
“There’s an ordinance and it is the way it is,” he said. “I’m not going to comment on the legality or morality of it. We’re trying to protect our children.”
But Roper argued that Sunbury’s ordinance does not protect children. In fact, she said, most child welfare organizations oppose such laws.
“They oppose sex offender residency restrictions for a number of reasons,” Roper said. “One of them is that it makes it much more difficult for people who have served time and paid their debt to society to become truly rehabilitated. They’re forced to always live on the fringe, and that greatly increases the likelihood they’ll commit those crimes again.
“The other reason is it draws attention away from where children are actually in danger — the number of times a child gets snatched from a park is miniscule compared to the number of times children are molested by Uncle Joe. Children are far more at risk from their own immediate family.”
Strangers are the perpetrators of child sexual abuse in only about 10 percent of cases, according to government estimates. Thirty percent of those who sexually abuse children are relatives of the child, the National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder reports. The other 60 percent are non-relative acquaintances.
Sunbury police have said they intend to cite Teri Jo Hunt, a Sunbury resident and registered sex offender, for violating the city sexual predator ordinance on July 10. She had taken her children to a community event located in a public park.
Hunt’s incident marks the second time city officials have enforced the ordinance.
“What (Hunt) is going through now is not right,” said Thompson, who said a local rehabilitation counselor once labeled him no more danger to area children than anyone else on the street. “The city should be ashamed of itself. Whoever passed this ordinance didn’t have a conscience.”
n E-mail comments to dgessel@dailyitem.com.
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