We have had an absolute onslaught of applications the last couple of days. Many have been qualified and I've been deciding who is the most qualified tenant for each rental.
I always pre-screen each applicant by asking them about their criminal history. One applicant told me that he had a felony about 12 years ago and NOTHING else on his record. When I ran his screening, I found out that he was telling the truth, he only had one criminal offense on his record but that got him listed as a Tier II Sex Offender. My initial inclination was to just deny his application, but because he was the only approved applicant for this particular duplex, I decided to dig a little deeper.
About that time, his wife called to see if their application had been approved. I told her that I was investigating the Sex Offender issue and I wanted her husband's side of the story. She was quite upset that she might not get the rental and said that this issue had been dogging them for 12 years. She put him on the phone. His story was that about 12 years ago, when he was young and foolish, he was out partying with friends. He bought beer and one of the people in the car with them was under 18 (which he claims he didn't know at the time). The way many girls dress these days, I could believe that. He claims that he didn't have any sexual contact with the 14 year old girl! He also claims that he passed out and that he didn't know if anyone else had sex with the girl.
Of course, I'm always suspicious - very suspicious. After getting his story, I called our local sheriff's department and talked to the deputy who is in charge of sex offenders, who are required to register and check in with them. To my surprise, she basically affirmed his story. She said that his conviction of "corruption of a minor" meant that he did not have sex with the girl against her will. The deputy didn't have the exact details of the incident in her file but she said that he was not a predator and basically thought that the new law classifying him as a Tier II Sex Offender was unjust.
Therefore, with him not being a danger to the public and recognizing that he had absolutely no other criminal record, I decided to accept this family, even though the man is classified as a Level II Sex Offender.
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3 comments:
I'm sorry, but you are now going to have to face a torrent of questions and worry from the other residents. I know if I were a tenant, I would be very ticked off if a registered sex offender moved into my complex.
Your address will now go into the Megans' Law list. Many potential tenants whom you would most likely love to rent to will now leave your place off of the list. In addition, the presence of a sex offender creates an incredible amount of tension and a sense of terror that no matter how "benign" this convicted child molester's crime was, there is **NO WAY** that any parent would ever feel comfortable in your apartment complex.
Frankly if I lived in your neighborhood, I would write all your tenants about his presence and organize a systematic, but legal harassment campaign until he had to leave. And please... don't cry me a river about "rights"...the ONLY rights that are being respected here belong to the sex offender, NOT the children and their hard-working families.
Please re-consider about accepting his application, because you will ONLY be opening yourself for a campaign described above. It is not just me that is doing this, it is thousands of like-minded individuals around the country.
If you don't reconsider your position, then how are you going to explain this horrid acceptance of a child molester to your tenants, REGARDLESS of your own opinion, ore even of the police?
http://soretra.50webs.com
No he won't. I can name two people out of my coworkers/friends/family who actually check that information. Many don't even know its available and out of the ones that do, many don't know where to find the info. Furthermore, the ones who have the knowledge of the aforementioned will likely be searching for a "higher end" local if you get me.
So the tenant made a mistake 12 years ago with mutual sexual involvement and he should continue to suffer because of it? You are a fear monger with an unforgiving soul. You must be so old you forgot what it was like to be a teenager, raging hormones and all. Our legal system is FAR from perfect but it's better than nothing and it's all we've got. I can only hope you get your 5 minutes of fame and understand what its like to be falsely accused and/or unjustly punished. With your attitude, karma will eventually catch up to you.
Where do you get off with saying he's a "child molester"? Did you even read the post? Apparently reading comprehension isn't your best trait, but then again neither is compassion, or forgiveness.
The funniest part of all this is people like you think they're safe by not living by these registered sex offenders. It's great that people are as ignorant as you to believe that the only "sex offenders" are registered lol! Do you also think that the alarm system on your house will prevent a determined theif? What about that pin number on your ATM card? I bet you were all for increasing airport security too? What a joke that is... the government at its finest. Did you know the encryption on your wireless router can be compromised in under 5 minutes? This falls along the saying "a lock only keeps an honest man out". My version is... sex offender registries are there to comfort the ignorant.
Keep those blinders on and enjoy your optimism in society's ideals of security while I continue to profit from the ignorance of those who follow in your shoes.
<3 me
Whoa! This subject seemed to elicit a lot of emotion.
Peter, as I explained in my original post, I would not rent to this family if I thought there had been any forced sexual activity or rape committed. My initial inclination was to deny him, but after I talked to the Sheriff's deputy, I changed my mind. As with a lot of things in our society, I think our legal system has gone overboard on a lot of things. This is one of them. The applicant denies having sex with the girl and the sheriff believes that is correct (or at least doesn't have any evidence to the contrary).
This tenant will be renting a house, not an apartment, so there won't be any other tenants in the building. In addition, this tenant is not classified as a sexual predator, so the Sheriff will not be notifying any of the neighbors that a sex offender resides there.
Finally, since this tenant has had so much difficulty finding a house to rent, they are likely to stay a long time - which is good in the rental business.
Stizzit, I agree with you that a person shouldn't have to suffer forever for a past mistake. When I screen tenants, I won't take anyone who has had a felony (or been in prison) in the past 3 years; anyone who has more than 2 misdemeanors in the past 3 years; or who has been evicted in the past 3 years. Once they've been on the right track for 3 years, I'll consider them as a renter.
Mike
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