Double Punishment?   

Megan's Law requires officials to release the names and addresses of sex offenders when they move into a community. It also confronts news organizations with the ethical dilemma of whether they should print or air them.

If so, how many of them, how often, and how complete should that information be--a name and a town or neighborhood, a description, a photograph, a specific street address? Should journalists wait until a neighborhood rallies against a molester and stages a loud protest (or worse), making a news story a no-brainer?

What about the danger of vigilantism, a spectre so real that police print warnings against it on most notices about molesters' whereabouts? Or the chance that withholding coverage will let a molester strike again?

Experts warn that journalists may soon find themselves increasingly pulled between two poles: at one, the horror of withholding information that might prevent a crime; at the other, aversion to manipulation by either law enforcement or a punitive-minded public.

``Megan's Law is an eye-opener ethically, because it is, at the core, a conflict of interest between the reporter's need to disclose and protect society and her desire to protect privacy and freedom--all tenets, by the way, of social responsibility," says Michael Bugeja, a professor at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. ``Any ethical controversy like this requires editors to assess where they stand on an issue and then act accordingly, willing to accept the consequences."

Keith Woods of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Florida, agrees: Newsrooms must acknowledge their own agendas each time they deal with this issue. ``What Megan's Law and laws like it point up is the fact that we as a society don't believe the standard punishment is enough," says Woods. ``Society may have decided it may not want child molesters to live anywhere. But is a newspaper deciding it's going to participate in that?

``We have a difficult decision to make here as journalists. We cannot walk blindly into this decision and believe for a minute we are just providing information."

Roxanne Lieb of the Washington State Institute for Public Policy is generally complimentary of the press' actions over the seven years since Washington passed the country's first public notification laws. ``The responsibilities of the news media are as significant as the law enforcement response," says Lieb, whose agency tries to track the effects of what that state calls the Community Protection Act. ``But," she adds, ``the media don't have to deal with the consequences."

A ND THERE'S NO PREDICTING what those consequences will be. Just ask Los Angeles Times columnist Robin Abcarian, who unintentionally became part of the system policing child molester Sidney Landau.

Last December, police in Placentia in Southern California distributed fliers identifying Landau, a ``serious sex offender" and child molester, to his neighbors. Reaction was swift: People picketed his house, yelled at him through bullhorns and called 911 when he stepped outside to the mailbox.

But Landau didn't lose his thrift store job until an L.A. Times article on community outrage about him ran on page A-3. ``I did a wrong thing, and I paid for it," Landau told the Times in a second story accompanied by his photo. ``Now I am trying to start over, and I can't. Some people just want me to put a gun to my head."

``He's right, of course," Abcarian wrote. ``But is this really the solution we seek?"

Ironically, Abcarian's column, in which she agreed with Landau's claim that the media had cost him his job and questioned the usefulness of identifying molesters, brought him more trouble. Abcarian had written--only as ``detail for my column"--that she'd found Landau sitting outdoors, trimming his cuticles with ``what appeared to be a small, straight-edged razor." Readers called the Placentia Police Department, and officers took Landau into custody and searched his home for weapons, possession of which would violate his parole. None were found.

``I was completely surprised," says Abcarian. She'd wanted to talk to Landau (whose only response was to ask ``bitterly" if Abcarian could replace the job ``taken away...because of the media") about the way public notification laws have ``put convicts and the people in whose homes they were staying in an untenable position.... You can't have someone who serves 10 years, set him free and then make it impossible to have some sort of life."

But critics of Megan's Law say that's what happens, particularly once identities are disseminated through the press. Imperfect as police notification may be, its focus is narrower than any newspaper or television station can achieve: The media can't zone by neighborhood, says Woods.

``Consequently, you've now put the information in the hands of a larger group of people, and among them could possibly be those who would burn down his parents' home or stone it or harass them. What do you expect to be the impact of your actions?"

Once exposed, many molesters are driven from place to place, a few steps ahead of an angry mob--Landau, for instance, has been forced to move at least two more times.

A study released in November 1996 by Lieb's agency noted that only 33 cases of harassment of sex offenders had been reported in Washington, a state in which more than 10,000 sex offenders were registered. But one of those cases involved neighbors torching the house of a man about to be released from jail. Another man, who had moved to Scottsdale after being convicted of child molesting in Washington state, was driven out of that Arizona city last fall when residents there apparently tried to do the same thing.

Anecdotes about evictions, lost jobs and ostracism pepper newspapers from Florida to Oregon, and a suit filed by a group of 20 child molesters in New Jersey has frozen the notification process in that state, where, two months after the rape and murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka, the legislature pushed the law through. Now working its way through the appeals process, the suit says Megan's Law constitutes punishment after molesters have served their sentences and has made their lives--and their families'--intolerable.

But a child molester's quality of life ranks low on many editors'--and ethicists'--scales of concerns. ``The one right [a child molester] is enjoying is his freedom," says Philip Seib, a journalism professor at Southern Methodist University. ``His life is miserable? Too bad. If somebody finds his life is hell because people know who he is, it's because he's the guilty party."

Says Meilink, ``Too often in this country we have been in the business of salvation. We think everything can be fixed.... I believe people change, I believe in good things happening...but I believe in protecting children."

That was the thinking at the Opelika-Auburn News, a 14,000-circulation daily in east central Alabama. When he found out that Robert Dalton, convicted of molesting a four-year-old, was being released into a nearby town, Editor/ Publisher Phillip Lucas says, ``It never even dawned on my mind not to put it on page one. It wasn't his first conviction for child molestation. He had had many others.... We checked it out and found out he was bad news."

The paper centered its front page the next day with a story about the outrage of people who, living within 1,500 feet of Dalton's parents, were notified of his return as required by state law. On page A-2 was a copy of the Alabama Department of Public Safety notice, complete with Dalton's mug shot, vital statistics and address. That night, two local television stations aired stories about Dalton. ``We are going to do what it takes to run him out," said one neighbor.

The angry protest stopped only when officials discovered that the Daltons' trailer was too close to a day care center to comply with state law. Dalton then moved to an isolated spot in the next county, where, with some difficulty, says Lucas, the newspaper found and photographed his isolated home. ``We were looking for him," Lucas says. ``We wanted to talk to him." Shortly after that story ran, Dalton was evicted. Police say he is now living in the northern part of the state.

Says Roxanne Connor, the paper's managing editor, ``We think the privacy rights of convicted sex offenders don't outweigh the rights of people with children."

B UT WHAT ABOUT THE REACTIONS of others? A vigilante attack nearly three years ago prompted Newark's Star-Ledger to change its policy of printing child molesters' specific addresses. On January 10, 1995, two men broke into a dark house in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, announcing they were ``looking for the child molester." One began pummeling a man sleeping on the couch. But there was one problem--he wasn't the molester. This incident, and several others involving wrong addresses given by authorities or molesters themselves, prompted the paper to reconsider.

``Our general policy now is not to use the numerical street addresses.... They don't lend anything to the story," says Star-Ledger Associate Editor Leonard Fisher. ``It's usually enough to say they live in the community. Sometimes we will identify the street."

Fisher, then an assistant managing editor, told the New York Times the day after the Phillipsburg attack that the policy change was because of ``the difficulty of separating the news and the public service aspects of such reports" and the reports' high rate of error. Ironically, the Times itself illustrated the potential problems of pinpointing addresses, as it acknowledged in a January 13 correction. A map accompanying its article, ``Mix-Ups and Worse Arising From Sex-Offender Notification," had misidentified one community.

The Star-Ledger does few stories about released molesters until there's a community reaction to them, Fisher says, characterizing most papers in the state as being in a ``wait and watch" posture as the courts consider challenges to Megan's Law. No matter what the courts decide, he adds, ``I don't think it's incumbent on us to put [offenders'] names in the paper." The paper has devoted much attention to the issue of child molestation in general, he says, ``largely due to the spotlight the public has brought, their outrage and anger."

Skeptics say official information on molesters is iffy at best. ``I'd bet my own money," says Alex MacLeod, managing editor of the Seattle Times, ``that half of the people registered with law enforcement are not living at the places where they've told law enforcement they live." Leo Wolinsky, managing editor for news at the Los Angeles Times, says the error rate for the California CD-ROMs listing sex offenders runs as high as 40 percent. In most states, post-parole molesters are expected to report changes of address on their own--an ``honor" system that frequently fails, says Wolinsky. He points to stories in his paper reporting that 20 percent of the state's registered molesters can't be found. As Fort Lauderdale's Sun-Sentinel noted, Howard Steven Ault, accused of befriending, then raping and murdering two young sisters in Florida, was registered as a sex offender, but at an old address.

Even more disputable, but rarely examined, is the oft-repeated statistic that 80 to 90 percent of sex offenders repeat their crimes. Computer searches of news stories and Justice Department Web sites found no studies offering anything close to those figures, though a National Institute of Justice study published in June indicates that, after 25 years, the repeat rate is 52 percent. Researchers in Canada reported in August 1996 that 8.2 percent of sex offenders were arrested for another sex crime within two years, though in that group, the rate for pedophiles was higher than that of rapists or those who committed incest. In May, the Washington State Institute for Public Policy noted that 12 percent of sex offenders in that state were arrested on similar charges within seven years; a 15-year study in California found a 20 percent rearrest rate, and a University of California at Berkeley expert wrote in the Los Angeles Times that recidivism among sex offenders is about that of drunk drivers--26 percent are convicted again within two years.

``Maybe that's the kind of question a newspaper ought to ask," says MacLeod. ``What real danger do these people pose? I don't know that we've ever tried to answer that."

Nor, say some, do the media adequately convey that only 5 to 10 percent of child sex offenses are committed by strangers; most incidents involve incest or acquaintances.

``It's way easier to imagine something awful happening to your child because of the guy down the street than to deal with public policy, with the president signing a bill that will put more people into poverty--those big, abstract issues that will really affect kids more deeply," says the L.A. Times' Abcarian, who is also a radio talk show host and is disturbed by acts of vigilantism against child molesters. ``It's so much easier to have a bogeyman."

``I wonder how many reporters know themselves the relative infrequency of child abductions and sex homicides," says Steven Gorelick, a Hunter College journalism professor who specializes in media coverage of crime and violence.

He adds, ``The real falling down [on the media's part] comes to contextual information. Especially in regard to child abuse, there's the greatly underreported problem of interfamilial abuse.... I'm mostly concerned about the illusion of safety that is created by public crackdowns on these kinds of crimes. It's so easy. They're horrific, and they represent a quintessential kind of evil. But the press presents this information absent the context of how frequently these things occur and the known causes of it. An educated person would conclude, if he's an avid newspaper reader or television watcher, these kinds of infrequent crimes are the things to be concerned about."

There's another reason editors say they balk at coverage. ``Mainly, we don't want to become a tool for law enforcement," says Wolinsky. The mere creation of the CD-ROMs doesn't compel the paper to print their contents, he says. ``That information has always been available.... Our job is to be objective on both ends and not just to accept what [police] have."

The Tampa Tribune has also resisted publishing lists of offenders. ``We discussed it, and we decided to treat those names like anything else, to use good news judgment," says Senior Editor Larry Fletcher. ``We've also been asked by the state to print a list of deadbeat parents, and we decided at that time it's not the newspaper's role to be some kind of enforcement arm of the state. We were also concerned about the accuracy of the list."

S O INSTEAD OF PUBLISHING a roster of sex offenders, the paper identifies them and their presence in the community on a case-by-case basis. It relies on what Fletcher calls a media ``collective consciousness, a base line" of moral judgment. ``A good example is how newspapers would never publish the name of somebody under 18 if [he] committed a crime," says Fletcher. ``Now we look at the severity of crimes committed by children, and our collective consciousness says we now need to hold these children responsible." Is following that ``consciousness" the right thing to do? ``Well, that's what we grapple with in newsrooms every day," says Fletcher, ``on everything from six-inch stories to projects."

Bugeja at Ohio University points out that the press traditionally treats sex crimes differently. ``A newspaper or station that does not disclose the name of rape complainants routinely identifies women stalked and robbed at gunpoint in a park," he says. ``The reason sexual assault is treated differently is because society, especially women's groups, demanded such treatment. Media traditionally yield to strongly felt social demands, as we have seen with respect to large issues like race and small ones like courtesy titles."

The extent of that yielding may be the question. ``News organizations have to deal with the snowballing of public opinion into politics and into law--really, more bouldering than snowballing," says Woods. They ``are definitely responding to that sentiment in the public, and what they're grappling with is the question: Does that represent pandering or responsibility?"

The response can vary dramatically from paper to paper. Larger papers often respond to the traditional triggers. ``A press conference or community outrage" would spur a story, says L.A. Times managing editor Wolinsky, as would ``something that rises above the ordinary." In a market where even murders go unreported because of volume, the names of people being let out of jail don't show up on the screen, he notes.

Papers practicing a form of community journalism that includes printing even misdemeanors, however, may see Megan's Law as an impetus to spotlight child molesters, since the topic often qualifies as hot news. ``This may not be a front page story in Orlando or L.A.," says Lucas of the Opelika-Auburn News, ``but it's a front page story here." The resulting disparity in coverage, says Woods, may cause more predators to go to urban areas where hiding is easier.

Observers say there are options that fall between running big stories and ignoring the issue. Steve Geimann, immediate past president of the Society of Professional Journalists, and Georgia State University journalism professor Greg Lisby suggest unintrusive measures, like telling the public where Web sites, CD-ROMs or registries are located so they can find the information themselves.

But SMU's Seib thinks news organizations should do more. ``Child molesters are a special kind of beast, quite literally," says Seib. ``They deserve a more rigorous scrutiny. I don't see anything wrong with a newspaper taking affirmative steps to determine on its own when some people are coming back to the community."

Otherwise, if a molester comes into a community and molests again, the newspaper should feel some responsibility, Seib argues. ``From a journalist's standpoint, how do you say, `We had this information, and we decided not to alert the community to his presence?' "

There's no doubt that the public is deeply upset by the actions of sex offenders. That's all the more reason that the media have to make sure they are not stampeded, says Hunter College's Gorelick.

``It's one area where I'm almost constitutionally incapable of separating myself as a journalism professor and a father. I almost lose the ability to think clearly," he confesses. ``You can hear my ambivalence, I'm sure.... [But] reporters have to stand in the midst of these incredible hurricanes of indignation, when society is absolutely convinced that its foundations are being shaken by some horrifying new threat, have to stand up against it and be willing to resist this tide. If the press doesn't help us find our way when we're all rushing to condemn this new threat, who will?"