http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060822/COL05/608220305/100\
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Cincinnati imports sex offenders
When I asked Chris Lohrman if rehabilitating sex offenders is a big money-maker
for his agency, Volunteers of America, his reply was something like:
"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha."
"Of course, we get paid by the state for the services we provide, but we do this
more as a mission thing," he said, "to serve those who are least served by
others who don't want to serve these people."
The state of Ohio pays $62.59 per day for each parolee, including convicts who
are severely mentally ill or have medical issues, dropouts from substance abuse
programs and the worst prison pariahs, sex offenders.

Volunteers of America in Cincinnati has one of only three halfway houses in the
state that take sex offenders. The others are in Mansfield and the Turtle Creek
Center in Lebanon. So anyone who looks up sex offenders on the Hamilton County
Sheriff's Web site will find that about half of the 104 rapists, abductors and
child molesters in the downtown ZIP code are at the same address: 115 W.
McMicken St.
That's the Pogue Rehabilitation Center run by Volunteers of America. And City
Councilman Chris Monzel says it has turned Cincinnati into a dumping ground.
"Cincinnati is a net importer of sex offenders," says Brad Beckett, Monzel's
chief of staff. "They come here for treatment, and generally they never leave.
The more we bring down here, the more we increase our chances of having
problems."
Monzel wants the city to take legal action to make the Ohio Department of
Corrections stop paroling sex offenders to Hamilton County. In 2002, DOC records
show, 75 percent of the sex offenders paroled to Cincinnati were not from
Hamilton County. That number has declined, but outsiders still account for 57
percent in 2006.
"Do we want our inner city infested with these folks?" Beckett asks. "This is
the kind of thing that's pushing out our residents."
Beckett said Monzel forced Volunteers of America to back down on plans to expand
their halfway house and move from McMicken in Over-the-Rhine to a new building
in Queensgate.
Lohrman said city officials asked him to move it from the Findlay Market area.
"We never got past the dialogue stage," he said. "We have no plans to expand.
"You can come up with your own reasons why he's raising this as one of two
election issues," Lohrman said of Monzel, whose Web site puts lead paint and sex
offenders at the top of his media clips. "He's never talked to us."
One of the Pogue Center sex offenders was arrested for flashing on the
University of Cincinnati campus recently. "But that was the one and only
incident in the history of this program" for at least 12 years, Lohrman said.
"We've never had any complaints in this neighborhood."
It sounds like the Volunteers of America program is doing a good job of
treatment and counseling while the parolees are in the eight-month treatment
program. But what happens when they leave?
National statistics say 5.3 percent of sex offenders will commit sex crimes
within five years of release, and they are four times more likely than other
convicts to commit sex crimes.
And here's something else to remember: the victims.
In Boone County, the Cincinnati Post reported that prosecutor Linda Tally Smith
had this to say about a Honduran immigrant who repeatedly raped his girlfriend's
9-year-old daughter: "The legacy of sexual predators is they bring collateral
damage to their victims in the form of children who fear all adults."
Nobody wants to welcome home the 1,500 to 2,000 sex-crime pariahs who are
released from Ohio prisons each year. But I'd say Cincinnati has taken more than
its share. We have enough crime without importing sex offenders from the rest of
Ohio.
E-mail pbronson@... or call 513-768-8301.





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