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37 registered sex offenders in county


ALTUS - Convicted sex offenders are not given the option of a warm and welcoming environment once they get out of prison, and what awaits in the next world may be even less accommodating to them.

Law enforcement officials in Altus and Jackson County keep a close eye on the 24 offenders living inside the city limits and 13 outside.

Twice a year, a week before school lets out, “We go out and physically verify that they are, in fact, where they say they are,” said Altus Police Chief Mike Patterson. “And then the week before school takes up at the end of summer, we do it again.”

Jackson County jailer Jerry Gibson keeps tabs of the offenders outside the city limits and monitors their comings and goings through registration records filed at the jail, including names, addresses, fingerprints and DNA as well as state Department of Corrections and Probation records.

Under Oklahoma State Statutes Title 57 OS 1991, sexual offenders are required to report their current address to officials once a year for 10 years. If the offender's crime is aggravated - hinging on the nature and severity of the crime and the age of the victim - he or she must report every 90 days for the rest of their life.

As to what may seem to the offender a scarlet letter of sorts that he must wear, Patterson said, “Well all I can say is, if they don't like that, don't do it.”

The public, he said, has the right to know.

Police departments, Patterson said, are getting more adept at investigating sex crimes, and officers are continually sharpening their skills at interviewing young children who have been preyed upon.

“It's hard to interview a child,” Patterson said, adding that besides the emotional trauma that the child suffers, some interviewers themselves have children the same age as the victim. “It's no easy job.”For example, he said, “With little bitty children you cannot ask them big questions, but you have to have the information.” If the forensic interview is done well, he said, it goes a long way toward making a case in court that stands up clearly with no leading questions.

A 3- or 5-year-old child, he said, often has good communication skills. Early in the interview the officer may ask the child, for example, “What color is my jacket?” The child answers “red.” “But if I told you this was really a green jacket, what would you say?” The child answers “red.” “If I told you I really wanted you to say it was green, what would you say?” The child again answers “red.”

“The point is, the child knows,” Patterson said.

A really good interview with a child, he said, quite often leads to a plead out. The suspect's attorney will watch the taped interview and tell his client, “You don't really want a jury to see this evidence.”

That way, Patterson said, the child is not traumatized. Provisions also allow children, under certain circumstances, to testify in the judge's chambers.

Children, Patterson explained, especially children who can't read or write, only know what they see, smell feel, hear, touch and taste, and they don't deal well in the abstract. It comes down to a child understanding the chain of events.

The victim, Patterson said, is hurting and embarrassed at the degrading and violent treatment he or she has been through, and that applies to adults who have been victimized by adults as well.

At a seminar he attended several years ago, Patterson said, a sex crime investigator told the gathering to place their hands in front of them and look at them, no looking around the room, and think in detail about their last sexual experience, including atmosphere, what you said, what your partner said, and - form a mental picture. When the gathering had done that, they were asked if any volunteers would like to tell the group about their experience. There were no volunteers.

What you're asking the victim to do is the same thing, Patterson said - to get up in a room full of strangers and tell every detail.

Patterson's advice to parents in regard to any of the sex offenders listed on the Altus or Jackson County Web sites is simple: Tell your children, “You do not have a conversation with the guy that lives in that house. Just do not speak to him.”

Patterson adds that the children should not even walk down the street in front of an offender's house. “You just can't be too safe with your kids.”

In his 36 years of police work, Patterson said, he has seen robbers who quit robbing, forgers who quit forging, burglars who quit burglarizing, even rapists who quit raping. But, he said, “Pedophiles, the true pedophiles, never quit. They don't ever quit.”

The oldest one he recalls being arrested in Altus, he said, was 91 years old.

The pedophile, he said, initiates his crime through a process of “grooming” - befriending the child and family through such enticements as toys, video games, and movies. “The next thing you know the movies may be sexually explicit movies.”

When the molestation takes place, Patterson said, the offender may tell the child not to say anything to mommy or daddy, or he'll lose his job and go to prison, or may even be killed. The child, he said, becomes miffed and conflicted.

“The vast majority of child sex offenders are not the total stranger,” Patterson said. They are, more likely, a friend of the family.

Patterson also advises parents to learn how to check on and restore any deleted history record on their children's computers. Kids, he said, will get on Internet chat boards and think it's “funny, cool, cute, exciting, a game.” But he said, they leave themselves wide open to predators who are able to track them through what seem to be only off-hand comments.

And many kids are in pain, he said. “There's some kids out there that are hurting, inside and out.”

Patterson urges parents to be in communication with their kids. “Make sure you talk to your child enough that your child feels comfortable taking to you about anything,” he said.

Just as in prison life for a sexual offender is “terribly bad, Patterson feels that what awaits certain victimizers in the beyond will be worse. “I just think there's an little extra hot corner of hell for people who abuse children and the elderly and the physically and mentally disabled,” he said.