Given the evidence presented so far, Timmendequas will likely be locked away if he doesn’t get the death penalty. Banishing predators like him from parents’ nightmares, however, is proving more difficult. More than 40 legislatures have now passed their own versions of Megan’s Law; in the toughest states, parole officers may knock on doors or hold a town meeting to warn residents about their new neighbor. But Megan’s Law is also on trial; legal challenges persist, and an early study found that while chronic child molesters are less likely to get away with their crimes under the law, they’re no less liable to commit them. Meanwhile, legislators in Texas just voted to allow convicted child molesters to be castrated in prison. The measure is strictly voluntary, though, and will affect only a few perverts. For all the courtroom drama and statehouse debates, the most important question for parents remains unspoken: is there anything that would have prevented Megan Kanka’s death?
Though police say he broke down during interrogation and led them to Megan’s bloodied body, Timmendequas is pleading not guilty. Public defenders hinted to the judge that they might know who the real killer is, and they sought a mistrial after Maureen Kanka’s emotional testimony. (They didn’t get it.) Timmendequas’s scrawled confession to police - replete with grammar-school spelling errors - was read aloud by a cop who was clearly shaken. It wasn’t clear, however, that Megan would still be alive if neighbors and schools had known about Timmendequas. A lot of the people on Megan’s street already knew that at least one child molester - one of Timmendequas’s roommates - lived among them. Critics say that just knowing there is a pervert in the area doesn’t really matter unless you’re willing to keep your child locked inside all the time.
The more natural response is to drive the sex offender away, and this is what bothers civil libertarians. In Washington state, a house was torched hours after neighbors rallied to keep a sex offender out of it. In Oregon, where molesters can be forced to post a sign - sort of a scarlet M - in their windows, a retired military man just out of prison was forced from a home last year after someone left him a burning cross.
Simpler solution: States have grown tired of the balancing act between the rights of ex-cons and those of their potential victims. Texas, for one, is following the lead of a convicted sex offender who asked the state to let him try a much simpler solution: castration. (Child molesters who choose the operation wouldn’t get out of jail any sooner.) While Gov. George W. Bush has yet to sign the bill, it’s been widely praised by victims’ groups. ““There’s no such thing as a reformed child molester,’’ says Dianne Clements of the Houston-based Justice for All. That isn’t quite true; experts say only some offenders are bound to repeat their crimes. But after Megan’s death, no one’s taking any chances. When two teenage sisters were found dead in Spotsylvania, Va., last week, neighbors suspected a sexual predator and began eying anyone with a white Ford pickup truck - a vehicle as common as a lawn mower. ““The public is fed up with living with this kind of fear,’’ says Dr. Toni Farrenkopf, a Portland, Ore., psychologist. That fear isn’t going away - even if Jesse Timmendequas does.
