PARENTS RALLY VS. PERV (Long Island ex-con caught ogling boys: cops)

Kevin Cloherty, 40, pleaded guilty in 1994 to attempting to sodomize a 13 year old boy and served four years.  Now, parents in a Long Island community are standing together to get the convicted sex offender who's living in their neighborhood off the streets and away from their kids.  The parents are handing out a CD-ROM with footage shot by an amateur teen filmmaker.  It allegedly shows Cloherty touching the biceps of teenage boys in a New Hyde Park supermarket in June.  He was not arrested for the incident.  He was speaking to teenage boys this past August at Floral Park Recreation Center, and when approached by cops, he allegedly lied about where he lived.  I don't want to wait for something horrible to happen for him to be put away, Laura Ahearn, head of Parents for Megan's Law said yesterday as two dozen parents demonstrated outside the courthouse in Hempstead where Cloherty was due to appear on a charge of false personation, a rarely used misdemeanor.  He has a pattern of behavior that has terrified the parents of this area, Ahearn said.  This man should not be on the street.  He needs and deserves treatment, and we deserve safety.  The mothers and fathers demanded that state legislators pass a civil commitment bill to keep sexual predators off the streets after their prison terms end.  Under the proposal, people nearing the end of their sentence, and identified as sexually violent predators, could be held in secure mental institutions after their release.  Although Cloherty has been a registered sex offender since 1998, police did not notify parents of his presence.  That's because, due to court delays, he never had the hearing to determine what class of sex offender he belongs to as required under Megan's Law.  

(New York)