Another Letter to the Editor: Sex Offenders Walking Amongst Us

Joe,

I have never left a comment on your website before but feel compelled to do so now. A very similar situation happened to my family. The neighbor behind us allowed his 40 year old male cousin to move in with him. He seemed like a nice man at first. He came into my yard a couple of days after he moved in, (4 days before the first Easter after Sarah Foxwell's death) to say hello. At that time my very large, black, German Shepherd actually jumped the fence and went after him. I was shocked and was able to retrieve the dog before he bit the him. My dog had NEVER done that before and has NEVER since. Very out of character for our dog! The next day I happen to check the sex offender registry. I made a habit of checking it every few months to see if anyone registered had moved into the area. To my shock and horror my neighbors cousin, the man my dog went after, was on the list as now living full time at my neighbors house! He had served a lengthy amount of time in North Carolina for raping an 11 year old child. I had already observed him sitting in his lawn chair in his back yard and watching my 3 children play in my yard. I was sick!

Two days later, on the Saturday before Easter I looked into my neighbors yard to see several small children, at least 10 of them, playing in my neighbors yard with the sex offender playing right along with them! The children were having an Easter Egg Hunt. I called the Wicomico County Sheriff's Office and asked the Duty Officer, " Is a guy who rapes little children allowed to have little children in his yard? Is he on any type of restriction or conditions as part of his release from jail?" The Duty Officer said that he would look into it, run the guys information and then call me back. Several hours later the Duty Officer called back and said , " We don't know if he is on any restriction or conditions because we don't have access to Parole and Probations computers on the weekend." I was stunned! How does law enforcement not have access to their computers? I asked to be transferred to Sheriff Lewis' voice mail and requested a call back.

When Sheriff Lewis called back the next day, I explained the situation and asked why Law Enforcement doesn't have access to those computers on the weekend? He stated that he didn't know and seemed genuinely upset over this discovered loophole in the system. I stated, "So what you mean to tell me is that if Thomas Leggs had been pulled over by a police officer the night Sarah had been kidnapped and lets say it was not reported that Sarah was in fact missing yet, there is no way to find out that Leggs should NOT have been in contact with any minor children, you would have to let him drive off with her? " Sheriff Lewis said yes. I couldn't even believe that this was occurring in this day and age!

Sheriff Lewis went on to say that the man now living behind me was no longer on any type of parole, restriction, probation or supervision. There was NOTHING the law could do to stop this man from having children in or around his person. NOTHING! Sheriff Lewis stated that he was due to speak at the State House in Annapolis the next day and had promised to bring the matter of the discovered loop hole up to the legislature. I never heard back from him to see if he followed up.
As for me and my family I thought, "Ok, There is nothing that law enforcement can do to keep this guy away from children but I can. I know this guy doesn't like German Shepherds so I will have an army of them!" First we welcomed a retired police dog into our family who was fully police trained. Next I printed the man's picture off of the Sex Offender registry and blanketed my neighborhood with it. I joined with my neighbors in a united show of force against this guy. We felt that it was the only way to protect our children. Any small breaking of the law he did, I was on the phone to the State Police or the Sheriff's office to report it. He constantly walked and biked around the neighborhood intoxicated; would have physical and verbal fights with his cousin and girlfriend out in the yard and street; He burned trash and toxic materials several times illegally in his yard and got several visits from the Fire Department, Fire Marshall, and the Police courtesy of me. He knew it was me that was making his life miserable and after about a year of this he finally gave up and moved out of the area.

Please let me caution you, my family and I did not make this decision lightly to stand our ground against this guy. We knew we were putting our family at risk facing this man. I am a retired Police Officer and am lucky to have training and firearms to help protect my family. We never broke the law, harassed this man or had any type of contact with him after his first initial visit in my yard. We just simply sat back and watched for him to create havoc and made the appropriate phone calls. We were completely within our rights to print off his picture and information because it is part of the public records. We felt the risk was GREATER to let this man sit in his yard day after day staring at our children; Riding his bike around our neighborhood and watching the children play at the parks and in their yards. We weren't going to cower or hide our heads in the sand. We wanted to teach our children to be brave, handle the situation head on and not be scared. We didn't want to SCARE our children but wanted to PREPARE them by giving them the tools to keep themselves safe. This was a very personal choice for our family and I recommend everyone search their own souls for the right course of action to take for themselves. In the end we were very lucky that this man chose not to retaliate against us and instead thought it better to pack up and leave. Please understand, if this man was truly trying to straighten his life out and had kept to himself, I may have just chosen to keep a watchful eye on him and allow him to make a better life for himself. Instead this man chose to make his behavior not only a nuisance but a danger to the public. We were very fortunate to have neighbors who banded together with us to show a united front.

I don't know what was more troubling the fact that this predator lived so close to us or the fact that law enforcement could do nothing about it. We moved out of Wicomico County so I truly don't know if the loop hole we discovered was ever rectified. But I have my suspicions that it was not.

I am very sorry for the lady who is now going through what we went through. I may be able to offer some advice about what we told our children about this man. We told him that he hurt children but did not go into the gory details. We made them practice what to say if he ever approached them. We had a "Safe" word that only us and close family members knew. If Anyone did not tell them the safe word, they were to not trust them, run fast away, and NEVER go with him. We told them to help watch out for each other and to come inside the second they see him in his yard or in the vicinity. I made sure they saw his picture and remembered what he looked like. I wanted to empower them to be safe and to become less scared.

We live in a different world now than the world we grew up in. Unfortunately it seems the world is escalating in violence as demonstrated recently in Salisbury. We MUST change and rise to the challenge to meet this ever changing world. Bad situations occur every day to good people. It is how you handle those situations that define you.