Editorials
Friday, August 14, 1998

Sex offender laws
must be carefully framed

STATES enacted laws requiring authorities to notify communities about the addresses and job locations of sexual offenders in the hope that the benefits would outweigh negative effects. The dark side became plain last month when Michael Patton, a convicted sexual predator a week away from completing his parole, was found hanging by a rope from a redwood tree on the outskirts of Santa Rosa, Calif., a suicide.

The notification laws were enacted following public outrage about the 1994 murder in New Jersey of 7-year-old Megan Kanka by a neighbor who had been convicted of sex offenses twice and was standing trial for a third offense. All 50 states now have such laws.

Hawaii's version of Megan's Law went into effect last year, providing public access to current street addresses, but not house numbers, of convicted sex offenders. California's law, enacted two years ago, goes further, making available to the public a CD-ROM database of known sex offenders in the state and a sex-offender identification line that allows the public to run checks on suspicious individuals. Santa Rosa police went door to door within a two-block radius of the homes of Patton and five other residents identified as "high risk" offenders, distributing flyers detailing their criminal histories with their photographs and precise addresses.

Rayford Jones, a neighbor of Patton, said he was not surprised about his suicide after noticing him on a sidewalk the day before. "As soon as we made eye contact he looked immediately to the ground," Jones said. "He looked sort of like a poor soul. He was kind of pathetic-looking."

The aggressive notification procedures of the Santa Rosa police, bordering on harassment, evidently created an unstable environment for Patton, a condition that is hardly conducive to rehabilitation. Such procedures will not allow sex offenders to lead normal lives. A recent study also concluded that such laws lead to "excessive community fear or anger."

The suicide is evidence of the wisdom of the law in Hawaii, which is designed to neither frighten neighbors nor harass prior sex offenders. Megan's Laws should alert neighbors about the proximity of sex offenders, but not in ways that further punish those who already have paid their debts to society.

Swiss bank deposits

AS the Nazis rose to power in Germany and swept across Europe, tens of thousands of Jews desperately tried to safeguard their savings by depositing them in banks in neutral Switzerland, a traditional safe haven. Millions died in the Holocaust. When the survivors and the children of those who died tried to retrieve the money, they were met with evasions. Swiss bank officials claimed they could not find accounts, or they demanded death certificates for the Holocaust victims, which could not be produced.

But the claimants persisted. They won the support of American officials and, under pressure, the Swiss bankers finally relented and agreed to cooperate.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker led a committee that attempted to identify the owners of dormant accounts. A breakthrough occurred in January 1997, when a bank employee rescued Holocaust-era documents dealing with some of the deposits from a shredder room at Union Bank of Switzerland in Zurich.

Now the banks have agreed to pay $1.25 billion to 31,000 Holocaust survivors and their descendants to settle the claims. The settlement of the class-action suit was announced by Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, who has held many hearings on the issue.

Only six weeks ago, the Swiss had said they would pay no more than $600 million. Since then several state and local governments had announced that they would impose sanctions against the Swiss banks, which presumably prompted them to improve their offer.

In addition to the stonewalling on the Jewish deposits, the controversy has led to disclosures of Swiss complicity with the Nazis in dealing in stolen gold and strategic materials.

The agreement is a long-overdue settling of accounts with Jewish depositors, but the biggest price is not the money but Switzerland's reputation as an innocent neutral in World War II.

Embassy security

ONE of the tragic twists of the African embassy bombings is the disclosure that Ambassador Prudence Bushnell expressed concern to the State Department about inadequate security at the Kenya embassy eight months before the blasts. Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering said the department supported the ambassador's recommendations to strengthen security at the diplomatic compound but lacked the needed funds. If there ever was a case of short-sighted economizing by Congress, this is it.

President Clinton has asked for a report on security weaknesses at embassies worldwide and intends to ask Congress promptly for emergency funds to rebuild the wrecked facilities in Kenya and Tanzania. In addition, money is needed to reduce the exposure to such attacks in other embassies.

To be sure, it is impossible to make any facility invulnerable to attack, but it is possible to make it difficult for terrorists. The cost is minimal in terms of what is at stake -- in the case of the Kenya explosion more than 250 dead and 5,000 injured.

The position of the United States as the world's lone superpower sometimes makes its diplomatic representatives and their facilities targets for our enemies. Every possible step must be taken to protect the embassies and to find and punish those who attack them.

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Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited Partnership

Rupert E. Phillips, CEO

John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher

David Shapiro, Managing Editor

Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor

Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors

A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor