Pasco asks court to dismiss sex predator’s lawsuit over residency

NEW PORT RICHEY — Pasco officials are seeking dismissal of a lawsuit that maintains the county’s residency restrictions for registered sexual predators are unconstitutional.

Tampa attorney Patrick Leduc filed the lawsuit against Pasco County in October. It asserts that the county’s sexual predator ordinance, passed by the county commission in April, makes it impossible for registered sexual predators to live in Pasco.

Leduc said his client, Earl Reyes Villagomeza, 31, of Lutz, convicted last year of two counts of lewd or lascivious molestation of a child age 12 to 15, is unable to return to his childhood home because of the county’s newly enacted residency restrictions for sexual predators. He lives in a hotel near the Florida State Fairgrounds in Hillsborough County.

Because it is his first offense, Villagomeza was sentenced to two years of community control followed by eight years of sex offender probation. Villagomeza is the first registered sex predator in Pasco County to fall under the county’s new law prohibiting offenders from living within 2,500 feet — about a half-mile — of schools and other places where children gather.

The 907 sexual predators living in Pasco before the passage of the new ordinance are permitted to live within 1,000 feet of such places under the state’s less-restrictive 1998 Florida Sexual Predator Act.

In its motion to dismiss the case, the Pasco County Attorney’s Office asserts the new restrictions are in keeping with restrictions passed by more than 40 Florida counties and 253 municipalities.

The county attorney also maintains that Villagomeza never has been charged with violating the county’s sexual predator ordinance. Therefore, Leduc cannot claim his client was harmed by the ordinance.

But Leduc has said there is no question Villagomeza has been harmed.

“Murderers, drug dealers and child abusers don’t have to register or be subject to residency requirements,” he said. “I understand that my client is the second coming of Satan. Nobody wants his kind here. But you don’t pass an ordinance that makes it impossible to live anywhere except the Green Swamp.”

He said the ordinance ultimately will force sexual predators into surrounding counties with less restrictive ordinances — or result in sexual predators becoming homeless, making it difficult for law enforcement officials to track their whereabouts.

Leduc has filed an emergency motion for a temporary injunction to allow Villagomeza to return home until the lawsuit is resolved.

No court date has been scheduled on Leduc’s motion for emergency relief or the county’s motion to dismiss.

 

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