The 19 child sex offenders who were told they must leave Wayside Cross Ministries by July 26 have filed a civil federal lawsuit against the city of Aurora, arguing the men should not have to move and challenging the state’s residency laws for registered sex offenders.
The men were given eviction notices in late June because they live within 500 feet of McCarty Park. Under Illinois law, child sex offenders cannot live near schools, playgrounds or daycare facilities.
But civil rights attorneys Adele Nicholas and Mark Weinberg argue in a suit filed Thursday that the city is misconstruing the meaning of a park vs. a playground and measuring the distance between the building and park.
Aurora, IL Mayor Richard Irvin said he hoped Wayside Cross Ministries (in Aurora, IL) to reconsider its decision to house a specific man released from prison. In my opinion, this faith-based halfway house is the best place for him as evidence presented at the SMART conference suggests that released inmates are more likely to be successful with a support system in place. The newspaper story suggests that this children’s play park is too close to the Wayside Cross property and that the city just always measured wrong. In reality, this park was never a children’s play park. The rocking horse playground features shown in the newspaper were just installed a few weeks ago in an effort to punish the Wayside Cross and force them to evict the 19 registered residents. The man the mayor has issues with is not convicted of a sex-crime so is allowed to live near parks and schools. The registered residents are being punished as pawns in the mayor’s effort to attempt to force the Wayside Cross ministry to unfairly evict a particular resident. On July 19th, a judge was going to decide to temporarily stop the eviction process. I am not sure what happened at that hearing. The Wayside Cross is a church so residents could claim sanctuary in the church and just not leave. It would certainly be an interesting challenge to the constitutional “Freedom of Religion” issue if the mayor ordered police officers to physically remove parishioners from their church. The video of such a thing would be sure to make world news. If the mayor does this, it would certainly be challenged. Attorney Mark Weinberg would likely get involved and the legal precedent would be helpful to our cause.
Thanks for the update and the very informative article. The information in the report gave me some much needed ammunition to fire off this letter to the mayor’s office:
Dear Mayor Irvin:
I have been following closely the events concerning the 19 residents at Wayside Cross who have filed suit over their pending eviction from the property and ministry. From my vantagepoint, the city’s error in calculating the distance from the playground to the ministry should not burden these residents, especially since there has been no public safety issue related to their presence at the ministry. This bears out with studies that firmly show no correlation between physical proximity of registrants to child-centered areas and crime rates against the children frequenting those places. Sexual crimes overwhelmingly occur within relational proximity (relatives, siblings, and persons in authority) rather than mere physical proximity.
In light of all of this, it seems perhaps too simple of a solution for the city to conceive, but one that in my opinion makes perfect sense, is to not disrupt the community any further with evictions and lawsuits, which will cost the city tens of thousands of dollars to defend against, and have the city right their error by designating the playground portion of McCarty Park as a separate embedded playground with its own name and borders, and use that parcel as the yardstick by which to measure the distance that the state statute requires. From what I’ve read on the issue, Wayside Cross Ministries would be clear of the playground proper by the statue’s definition if the playground area itself was used in the distance determination. This would not only be fair, but would probably be far less costly to the city than the legal mess it has gotten itself into, not to mention the public relations cost the negative national press this issue is giving the city right now.
I am hopeful you can lead the city out of this dilemma, otherwise not only will the lives of the residents of Wayside Cross be disrupted, but the whole community of Aurora will lose out as well.
Sincerely,
[name withheld]
This is a sensible letter. If they have a sensible mayor, he will take it seriously.
Nice job. I love the line…”occur within relational proximity….rather than mere physical proximity”. That is an excellent way to frame it. Thanks for taking the time to do so.
JUST TELL THEM NOT TO GO TO THE PLAYGROUND. There, solved it for y’all.
Sorry, I realize this stuff requires patience, but a legal pishering match over what constitutes someone living x feet from what for is so far removed from the notion of public safety that I can’t even…