When the Dayton Daily News announced they were doing a "series" exposing registrants living in nursing homes, somehow I knew the series would end with the reporter feeling the need to list every nursing home in the state accepting registered citizens.
That in itself is an affront, but reporter Katie Wedell's reports get worse:
"Ohio has a duty to protect its most vulnerable citizens, many of them frail or disabled. But safeguards enacted to keep sex offenders in check are more difficult to enforce when the predator is down the hall.
A Dayton Daily News investigation found that 136 sex offenders are living in 43 nursing homes in Ohio, where an intricate safety net is supposed to balance the needs of all patients with a responsibility to shield them from danger."
"We uncovered stories about assaults and attempted assaults in nursing homes across the state – from a 48-year-old paraplegic who raped an elderly woman; to a man who paid a developmentally disabled woman 75 cents to perform sex acts on him; and even a 45-year-old sex offender who attempted to rape a nurse.
Some sex offenders in nursing homes are barely mobile and not capable of harming their neighbors, but many remain capable of committing crimes."
You know what is omitted from this report? Whether the other two cases she mentioned had anything to a registrant. (I'm willing to guess they were not.)
The bottom line: Shame on Katie and the Dayton Daily News for writing this crap. My worry is how this story might hurt the residents of these few programs willing to accept registrants no thanks to one of the featured guests in the report, Rep. Courtney Combs. Shame on him too.
I agree. Crap post
ReplyDeleteDayton "news" media run stories on rso (where living, residence checks...) 3 or 4 times a year, mostly bad, disguising it as public service. Never bothering to mention facts on how registration, publicity and fear mongering do nothing to make anyone safer. It's all about ratings.
ReplyDelete