SEX OFFENDERS NAMED ON PARENTS’ WEB SITE

Parents for Megan's law is a group unhappy with the state's progress of putting the names and addresses of convicted sex offenders online, so the group has culled the information on sex offenders released to police departments and put it on its Web site.  A 1996 law requires convicted sex offenders to register with their local police departments upon their release from prison.  According to the New York post, as many as 2,700 others who have been protected from public notification could be added after the state holds hearings to deem if they are high risk.  Anyone wanting to know if a sex offender is living in their neighborhood can simply go to www.parentsformeganslaw.com and search by county.  Laura Ahearn, executive director of Parents for Megan's Law said her group had hoped to work with the state on the project, but found itself stonewalled by bureaucrats who refused to release pertinent information, even though it is public.  We had to hand-copy all the information for the site for over a year because the Division of Criminal Justice Services wouldn't provide it to us directly, despite 14 months of requests.