Ohio sex offender civil registry never used

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — An online registry of child-sex
offenders found liable in civil lawsuits has never been used eight years
after it was created by legislative compromise, an outcome predicted by
critics of the compromise, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
The
registry replaced a proposal providing a one-time, one-year window for
victims to file lawsuits alleging child sex abuse had occurred as long
as 35 years earlier. That one-year period would have started when the
proposal became law.
But pressure from the Roman Catholic church
and other church groups scuttled that provision and replaced it with the
registry over the objections of abuse victims, the Columbus Dispatch
reported Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1gOt4zN ).

"It
was never set up to be effective from Day One. It was a diversion to
make people feel like something would come of it," said Barbara Blaine,
president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
The
registry is maintained by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office but has
never had a name placed on it. It differs from the state’s sex offender
database, which lists people convicted of sex crimes and labeled sex
offenders.
The civil database gives victims the ability to place
the names of child-sex offenders in the online registry if a judge finds
the offender liable in a civil judgment.
It’s no surprise the
registry hasn’t been used, said John Murphy, executive director of the
Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association.
"Who’s going to do that if
they’re not going to get any damages?" he said. "All you do is get him
on some kind of registry, which would be nice, I suppose, but I don’t
know if private persons are going to go to all that trouble just for
that."
Carolyn Jurkowitz, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Ohio, didn’t know why the registry
hadn’t been used.
"I
know people have gone to dioceses and made their case. I can only
guess, but perhaps going through those processes and feeling like
they’ve gotten heard and had some relief satisfied their need to have
some restitution," she said.
The 2006 legislation also required
for the first time that church leaders report the abuse of a child and
extended from age 20 to age 30 the period in which a victim of alleged
abuse could sue.
___
Information from: The Columbus Dispatch, http://www.dispatch.com
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.

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