Interviewing a convicted sex offender is like interviewing anybody–except for the ankle monitoring bracelets, and the stories, and the sex crimes

PHOTO by DANIEL DE BOOM

The scariest part of trying to interview a convicted sex offender? The possibility–however remote–that you yourself could be assaulted. Sex offenders have a high rate of recidivism–a word which, ironically, one of the three Alamitos Beach sex offenders I interviewed last week stumbled over repeatedly.

And so this crosses your mind, however fleetingly. Besides, aren’t all sex offenders slavering maniacs? Actually, no. They’re not. Most of them look just like the rest of us. They go to work and come home, and walk little dogs just the way we do.

I knew this going in, but what made a weird scene even weirder was the weather. Last week was so beautiful. It was almost summer again, in the 1100 block of East First Street where 10 convicted sex offenders live in the same battleship grey Streamline Moderne apartment building. Bitter old ladies in ill-advised strapless tops walked about sunning themselves.

“I always thought there were perverts in this neighborhood,” one of them told me. “I could just sense it.” I was already sweating in the hot sun as I crossed the street and walked toward the apartment complex.

Sidewalks were clean, yards were well-landscaped, and it was hard to believe a sex offender could get within a mile of here without some kind of Long Beach-wide society-is-crumbling alarm going off. But they were here. Supposedly.

The first man I saw–walking a tiny Chihuahua–was actually someone I needed to talk to. His boyfriend managed the sex offender apartment house, the man said, and that’s the only reason they were there. It was a job.

This was a quiet place, the man said, wondering in passing if those nearby daycare centers–not far from the apartments–were really licensed. He said the biggest excitement they’d had recently had been Feb. 19 and 20 when they received respective visits from KFI 640 AM radio excitables John & Ken; and scouts for TV psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw.

Otherwise not much was shaking, said the man, who eventually gave only his first name: Joe. His tiny dog finally pooped, after circling a small tree several times. He picked up the poop with a plastic bag in a plastic-gloved hand–and that was it. The glove came off, and we were done.

I knocked on the first apartment door I saw. It belonged to a construction worker named Michael who worked nights retrofitting an industrial complex in Carson. And? He invited me in, nudging his small white dog, Boobie, out of the way. That was it. No film noir lighting, no leering, no touching where my bathing suit covered. Michael seemed like a regular dude, until he explained things–such as why he owned a dog.

“The reason I got my dog is so that nobody will be afraid of us,” said Michael, who is a rather large man. “If anybody tries to set me up, I got my dog with me. People will be able to identfy me.”

He’d been arrested way back in 1992 and convicted of forcible rape, Michael told me–but his real crime had been having two girlfriends.

“There’s people I know who pissed in an alley, and got six months. And they had to register” as a sex offender, Michael said. “Everybody deserves a second chance, no matter what you done did.”

Michael gave his age as 41–it’s 42, according to the Megan’s Law database–and he claimed that none of his fellow apartment dwellers had had sexual relations with a minor. According to the database, seven of 10 of them have. Michael is not one of the seven.

In his case, one girlfriend had found out about the other, Michael said (the tale was a little hard to follow), and had invented a trumped-up charge. And that was it. He’d been convicted, had served about three years and had been released, eventually living for quite some time with his present girlfriend in Carson.

Then, various portions of Jessica’s Law began being enforced–further regulating where sex offenders can and can’t live–and his happy Carson home was pulled apart. Apparently, they’d been living too close to a school.

Michael’s parole officer had found him this apartment, he said, and the state paid for it–about $1,500 a month–but the rules were many: you had wear an ankle monitoring bracelet; you couldn’t have any visitors after 10 p.m.–and absolutely no Internet.

But that, he said, was all in the past–or, mostly. The very day that John & Ken showed up was the day his parole had ended, Michael said. They’d come and collected his ankle monitoring bracelet, instantly changing him from a registered sex offender on parole to a mere registered sex offender. The rest of his life was ahead of him.

“I’m going to look for some place else,” Michael said–praising the apartment building’s owner for giving him a second chance and a roof over his head. “I’m stacking my money up, but I am going to stay here for now.”

I went out to my car to get Michael a copy of The District, which had just come out a few hours earlier, and when I came back a whole class of elementary school kids was trooping past his apartment house with their minders.

Michael had let Boobie out, and the curly white dog was smelling the tree where the Chihuahua had pooped earlier. The school kids couldn’t resist petting Boobie, and soon he had a circle of stragglers running their hands through his wavy locks. It was a little unsettling.

I forged deeper into the apartment building, knocking on doors and trying to find a resident Michael had told me about–who’d actually agreed to be on the Dr. Phil show. The man wasn’t home–but I found another man, who gave his name as Brian. He emerged from one of the second-floor units, a tall, muscled man in clean work slacks and a neon green T-shirt. He shook my hand and told his story.

He’d been convicted of forcible rape, Brian said, for taking an intoxicated girl home from a frat party. He admitted to me having given the girl alcohol at the party–but he denied assaulting the girl, saying he kicked her out in the hallway when he realized she wasn’t in any condition to have sex.

(The strange part was that as of Feb. 27, Brian wasn’t listed on the Megan’s Law database as living at this address.)

After serving time, Brian said, he’d been required by law to register as a sex offender–but hadn’t done it.

“I knew the girl behind the counter–she was a mouth–and it was right before our 20th high school reunion, and I said ‘She’ll tell everybody,’ ” Brian said. As a result, he’d been re-arrested and had served time for failing to register.

He now wore an ankle monitoring bracelet–a gray plastic thing, which he showed me by lifting one pant leg slightly. I realized again how surreal the whole situation could seem–him, a strapping six-footer on the landing; me interviewing him on the stairway, from a few steps below.

“A lot of us don’t want to come forward,” Brian said of the registering process. “It’s an embarrassment to us. The cops know you and they’ll take you in for anything. When are we accepted back into society?”

That’s a question which society hasn’t answered yet–and it’s a question which not everyone wants to consider. I tried talking to a third sex offender–a tattooed man in his 30s who was carrying a can of Comet and a vacuum cleaner out of an upstairs unit–but we were interrupted by a honking horn from a pickup truck out front.

That was my cue; the driver was another big man who said he was the Neighborhood Watch. I think that was just his little joke, for when I pressed him, he said he worked for the building’s owner–and that if he caught me here again, he’d have me arrested for trespassing.

He was very insistent on that last point, so I thought I’d better am-scray. And so I did.

Tags: alamitos beach, California, Dr. Phil, Dr. Phl McGraw, El Dorado Park Estates, Jessica's Law, John & Ken, KFI 640 AM, Long Beach, megan's law, Second Council District, sex offenders, Southern California, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas, Virginia Country Club