Tuesday, October 03, 2006

SEXUAL PREDITORS LURKING AROUND IN THE HOOD

I just read Erroll Louis column on the heroic Mom who followed her motherly instinct and investigated her son's basketball coach who frequently called the 11 year old at home. What she found out was every mother and father's nightmare. The man who she and others entrusted their children with was a state registered sexual offender. One immediately asked how in the world a sexual offender can get a job as a basketball coach. The answer to that question is still under investigation.

What shocked me was the statistical data that scribe Louis shared. According to the data listed in his Daily News article, there are over 60 serious offenders in the 11213 zip code which covers much of crown Heights and around 59 in 11216, which covers Bedford-Stuyvesant. I did some investigation into my own area code 11233 and was startled to see the long list of offenders living within this area. Some as young as 18 and as old as 60 arrested and convicted from rapping, sodomizing and sexually abusing children as young as 3. Yet when I conducted the same search in areas that have long been gentrified and communities of affluence, the list is low to non existent.

I remember when I was going to school in Atlanta. One of my sisters and her son came to live with us (another sister and I). She and her husband were in transition so she packed up her stuff and stayed with us to work until they got things together. We had a great time looking after my nephew. I know I personally enjoyed taking him back and forth to his babysitter and watching him until his mother came home. He was such a bright and active 3 year. Always laughing, and trying to sing the latest rap song while dancing around the room in his footed nighties. The only thing that would make him sit still was a good video.

Realizing she had no other choice but to entrust her child with strangers, my sister initiated talks with my nephew informing him even at his young age of 3, about good and bad touches and routinely checked in with him daily to make sure that no one violated him. This early lesson paid off when one day we picked him up from his babysitters to discover a drastic change in his mood. He wasn’t his happy jovial self. Something was deeply troubling him. However, he wouldn’t share it with his aunt and me. However, once his mother came home and reassured him that nothing would happen if he tells the truth, he informed her that his babysitter inappropriately touched him. We were all shocked and devastated. Yet, relieved and thankful that my sister took the time to tell him, even at his young age, the difference between a good and bad touch and routinely encouraged him to share everything with her. A sad and horrible lesson for a child to learn. However, by not being afraid to tell and knowing the difference saved the other children who were under this caretakers care. We of course called the cops and had this woman jailed. However, the realty that someone you trust could do that to a child haunted us all.

Here is the article…

The predator next doorEvery parent's worst nightmare came true in Crown Heights last week when a suspicious parent discovered that a violent sexual predator, fresh from a prison term for molesting a 15-year-old boy, had spent months coaching her and others' teenage sons. As coach, he had a position of trust - and access to the kids' home addresses and phone numbers.Alfonzo Forney, 28, who is listed on the New York State Sex Offender Registry as a Level 3 offender - the highest alert status, reserved for the most dangerous criminals - served from March 2005 until last week as a volunteer basketball coach at the Saint John's Recreation Center, a facility run by the city's Parks Department. Today, Forney is behind bars at Rikers Island for violating the terms of his parole. To put it mildly, he had no business being around kids.In 1999, Forney was arrested in Brooklyn and charged with assault, sexual abuse, sodomy, endangering the welfare of a child and unlawful imprisonment. The state's criminal justice Web site says he "immediately and physically overpowered" his victim, a 15-year-old boy.Forney was convicted of attempted first-degree sodomy and sentenced to four years in prison in 2001. He got out before the full term was up and was arrested again in February 2004. This time, Forney was convicted of criminal impersonation - he tried to jump a subway turnstile and flashed a badge when caught, claiming to be an employee of the Brooklyn district attorney's office. Forney got sent back to prison, and not long after that he was out on parole again and coaching boys at Saint John's.According to a Parks Department spokesman, there are 120 volunteers in various programs around the city, and the mayor's criminal justice coordinator is currently checking all of them against the sex offender database.Parks officials say that all future volunteers will undergo background checks and that the director of the Saint John's center has been suspended pending an investigation.All of that is good to hear, because nobody at Parks seems to have known anything about Forney's past until a Crown Heights parent filed a police report and alerted the press, leading to my phone calls and a story on WABC-TV."I just had a motherly instinct," says the unsung heroine of this tale, who didn't like Forney calling her home to speak with her 14-year-old son. "I've always talked to my son about sexual predators - since he was in day camp at 4 years old - that people shouldn't touch you in certain places, and if they threaten you, don't believe it."On a hunch, she checked Forney's name on the state's database - and contacted the cops the same day.The online registry is easy to check. Just go to www.criminaljustice.state.ny.us and click on the button for the sex offender subdirectory. According to the directory, there are more than 60 serious offenders in the 11213 and 11225 zip codes, which cover much of Crown Heights - and about 59 in 11216, which covers much of Bedford-Stuyvesant.Parents with kids in any youth program, in Crown Heights or elsewhere, should do what the Parks Department has only started to do: Check the names and photos of any adults dealing with kids against the database of Level 3 offenders.It's an easy way to help keep our kids safe. Originally published on October 3, 2006