Jeffrey Epstein was able to live an unencumbered life despite being a registered sex offender because of the many loopholes in the National Sex Offender Registry's requirements, according to experts.
"He claimed his residence was in the Virgin Islands, and his plea deal allowed him to take advantage of a loophole in New Mexico," former federal prosecutor Cheryl Bader, a criminal law professor for Fordham Law School, told Fox News. "The national registry is a compilation of information, so its accuracy depends on how compliant each jurisdiction is with maintaining and updating records."
The Sex Offender Registry and Notification Act (SORNA), passed in 2006, was to have established a national standard, but states pushed back. Now, jurisdictions have different rules about requirements on notification of address changes, registration, and whether an offender's neighbors are to be notified.
Epstein never registered with the New York Police Department because even though he had a home in Manhattan, he listed his private residence as one of his islands in the Caribbean and said New York was a vacation property, allowing his monitoring to fall out of New York's responsibility, the police department has said.
In addition, Epstein was not required to register in New Mexico, where he spent more time, because his victim in Florida's 2007 case was 17 years old, the consent age in New Mexico.
According to SORNA, sex offenders must register annually with an updated photograph and DNA sample, and they're also required to report changes of address and vehicle information. Epstein was able to avoid many of the rules because of how he was categorized.
"Most sexual offenders are never listed in the registry because the victim knows them and is too scared to come forward. Sexual abuse is a very underreported crime," Andrea Powell, the founder of human trafficking survivors' advocacy group Karana Rising, told Fox News. "Thus, the registry is not capable of doing what it intended to do, which is to keep people safe from offenders."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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