• 15
  • September
    2011

Where do you go, when you're a registered sex offender and you've done your time behind bars?

Being convicted of a sex offense has many possible consequences. Jail or prison is only one of them. There is also the possible impact on employment and housing opportunities.

The housing problem is becoming more and more challenging. Many municipalities have ordinances restricting where people on the sex offender registry can live. In Portland, in particular, the effective of the restrictive ordinances often seems like a modern-day form of exile.

And there's the problem of homelessness. If you are on the sex offender registry, you are required to notify law enforcement officials of your address. But how do you do that if you are homeless?

The number of registered sex offenders in Oregon is, in round numbers, 18,000. A substantial segment of that group is homeless, though no one knows exactly how many.

The Oregonian recently profiled one such homeless ex-offender, a 51-year-old man named Robert Corry. He sleeps in a battered 1985 vehicle on a lot in Salem near a cluster of Marion County buildings that include the jail and community supervision offices. He previously parked amid the RVs at a Wal-Mart.

The manager of the Oregon sex offender registry, Vi Beaty, says tracking homeless sex offenders is a national problem. "Nobody really has a good answer for it," Beaty said. "We have people registered under bridges. If they sleep in a parking lot or rest area it would not surprise me."

Corry served six years in prison for sex abuse before he was released in 2009.

Source: "Where to Put Oregon's Homeless? Well, the Salem Walmart parking lot is out," The Oregonian, 8-22-11