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Parents need to know about Megan's Law

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Do you know who's caring for your children?  Do you even KNOW who has your children?  Does relinquishing parental rights mean all care and concern for that child's well-being are null and void?  Please read the following, and ask, does a natural parent have the right to know if his/her child has been raped or murdered by a stranger.....  (text is taken from: wikipediaConsider, too, how many children have been adopted/put in foster care prior to 1994.

The first Megan's Law was passed in New Jersey in 1994 after the rape and murder of Megan Kanka. Jesse Timmendequas, who years earlier had pleaded guilty to the attempted aggravated sexual assault of a girl, was convicted of Kanka's rape and murder and was sentenced to death, although he maintains that he is innocent of the charges and continues to fight his conviction and sentence.

The Megan Kanka Foundation suggests, "Every parent should have the right to know if a dangerous sexual predator moves into their neighborhood." That is the core principle of the law: parents should know when a sex offender moves into the neighborhood so they can protect their children.

There is, however, considerable controversy regarding the question of whether the Kanka family may indeed have known that a sex offender (not necessarily Timmendequas, however) lived in the house across the street. Although the Kankas vigorously deny any such knowledge, evidence suggests that the criminal past of at least one of the residents of the house where Timmendequas lived was common knowledge in the neighborhood. This criminal past included sexual assault, rape, and gang shootings.

Timmendequas lived in a house with two other convicted sex offenders with whom he had served time at the Adult Diagnostic & Treatment Center, the state's treatment-oriented correctional facility for sex offenders. One of the other offenders, Joseph Cifelli (who had been convicted of sexually abusing a 5-year-old girl), had lived in the same house as a child, and his past was well known in the community. According to a neighbor who lived on the same block:

"When I read that in the papers [that neighbors had no knowledge that three sex offenders were living on the block], I was pissed. They all knew what Joey Cifelli did. It was common knowledge. How could those neighbors go to bed at night and sleep and say that they didn’t know that he was a pervert?"

2007 Jun 7