Cape & Islands News

What attracts attracts 271 sex offenders to this area

Is Cape Cod becoming a sex offender haven?

The red dots on this map each represents where a registered sex offender live in the Mid-Cape area.

187 on Cape Cod, 84 more in in towns just over the bridge

By Walter Brooks

Like a patient about to die of in the final stages of a dread disease, the Mid Cape towns of Hyannis, Dennis and Yarmouth are covered with a red rash of registered sex offenders, 95 living in those three town alone.

We know that local 12-Step groups of every stripe often suggest that there is a logical reason why Cape Cod has a higher than average percentage of alcoholics, drug addicts and other hopefuls now in recovery.

We wondered if this also might explain the seemingly large numbers of sex offenders who have located here as well.

It is documented that when people feel they have a serious problem like alcohol abuse, they seek the place where they previously were happy and free of alcohol and other drugs, and that place is often the vacation area of their youth. That's probably why every Cape town except three are on the list for the 75 towns with the highest number of liquor licenses.

This is one reason there are more scheduled A.A. meetings here per capita than in any other area of which we know. Cape Cod TODAY even has a regularly updated A.A. blog called K.I.S.S. (for Keep It Simple, Stupid).

There is no comparison between the human problems above with the evils of sexual abuse because all the former can be arrested by anyone willing to admit they have a problem, and then be prepared to do whatever it takes to stop.

Sex offenders, on the other hand, seldom if ever stop their predatory and heinous actions, and we wondered whether the unusually high number of sex offenders per capita living on Cape Cod moved here for similar reasons. (Editor's Note: We were wrong about this See this Letter to the Editor.)

Michael J. Hill. SORB photo.

Throw in the just-off Cape towns of Wareham and Plymouth where there are 28 more, and there are 163 registered sex offenders from Plymouth to Provincetown.

What's it mean for Cape Cod?

This prurient interest in sex offenders was prompted by a story in the Berkshire Eagle this week which reported that a Level 3 sex offender named Michael J. Hill, 37, was arrested and charged by police on Cape Cod with two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14.

Hill is facing eight charges, including aggravated rape, kidnapping, assault with a dangerous weapon and threat to commit murder.

At his trial in Pittsfield which began Monday,  the alleged victim testified that she was held against her will and sexually assaulted over the course of about 20 days in late-January and February 2010.

Hill, a Level 3 sex offender which is a designation for those considered by the state to be at the highest risk for re-offending, has sexual assault convictions going back to 1989.

Cape has the same percentage of sex offenders as Boston

Over 75 % of our sex offenders
live in  the five towns of
Bourne, Dennis, Hyannis,
Wareham and Yarmouth.There are 216,902 people living on Cape Cod and 617,594 in Boston.

That means bucolic Cape Cod has about the same percentage of sex offenders as that big city.

I guess bucolic ain't what it used to be.

I'll bet most of you, like myself, assumed the sex offenders living here would mostly be in Hyannis and Wareham.

But tiny Dennis is #5 on the list with 16 sex offenders in that 2-mile wide town and Yarmouth and Bourne are at the top of the list ahead of Hyannis and Wareham.

Our alarm was discovering how many sex offenders have settled here, and our relief came when we discovered how easy it is to see WHO they are  and WHERE they live.

You simply go to this site, www.familywatchdog.us, type in the town name, and when the page appears, click on the "List" at top for the name and address of each offender.

• Yarmouth: 45 offenders
• Hyannis: 35 offenders
• Dennis:  25 offenders
• Bourne: 23 offenders
• Wareham: 21 offenders
• Plymouth: 17 offenders
• Harwich: 15 offenders
• Kingston: 13 offenders
• Plympton: 13 offender
• Falmouth: 13 offenders
• Duxbury: 11 offenders
• Mashpee: 10 offenders
• Carver: 9 offenders
• Brewster: 8 offenders
• Sandwich: 8 offenders
• Chatham: 2 offenders
• Provincetown: 2 offenders
• Eastham: 1 offender
• Orleans: 1 offender
• Truro: 1 offender
• Wellfleet: 1 offender

Sex offender information is also available on most every local police department's website as well.