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DailyMail.com has discovered more than 400 ‘pedophile dens’ of up to 18 sexual predators all living at the same California address.
An analysis of a government database of California sex offenders reveals that almost 2,000 convicted pedophiles are living together in groups of three or more at 442 locations across the state.
Law enforcement and current and former prosecutors of sex crimes told DailyMail.com the dens could be dangerous.
‘That’s a big deal,’ said Nate Seger, President of the Sacramento County Deputy Sheriff’s Association.
‘These guys and gals have addictions, and to put them anywhere near a temptation is not serving them and it’s not serving the kids.’
‘It’s terrifying. Your numbers truly, truly frighten me,’ said former Deputy District Attorney Sam Dordulian, who prosecuted sex crimes in the LA DA’s office.
‘If they’re all congregating with each other, it’s just creating the environment for more of these crimes to occur.
‘Even if they’re trying to stay clean, they’re in an environment where they’re around other pedophiles. They’re gonna be talking about children, having child porn available. And it’s just creating a situation where you’re almost sure there’s going to be another offense.’
DailyMail.com obtained and analyzed a copy of the Megan’s Law database of registered sex offenders in California.
The database contains records of 58,685 sex offenders, including 43,007 (73%) who have been convicted of sex crimes involving children.
By comparing these pedophiles’ addresses, the shocking picture emerged: hundreds of homes across the state where groups of child sex offenders were living, often near to schools.
DailyMail.com also spoke to residents of the ‘dens’ and even got a tour of one property housing several pedophiles.
One property on Elm Avenue in Long Beach is home to 16 pedophiles, according to the Megan’s Law database.
Bobbie Smith Elementary is just two blocks (850 ft) away.
One resident, David Edwin Kelly, 54, was convicted of lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age in 2007, and was released in 2018, according to the Megan’s Law data.
Another, Bernard Stover, 61, was convicted in 1990 of continuous sexual abuse of a child and served four years in prison. Jeromy Dante Deloney, 33, was convicted in 2019 of pimping children and released two years later.
Sex offenders whose crimes involved children under age 14 and who have been specifically designated as high risk by the state are prohibited from living within half a mile of schools.
A ‘hometel’ on 10th Avenue in San Diego houses 14 pedophiles and is 1,000ft from Urban Discovery Academy Charter, a Kindergarten through 8th grade school.
Resident David Mendez, 64, is registered there on the Megan’s Law database. He was imprisoned for 17 years and released in 2016, for ‘continuous sexual abuse of a child’, ‘sexual penetration of victim with a foreign object by force’, and ‘rape by force or fear’.
Another, John Fleeger, 47, was released from prison in 2016 after five years inside for ‘sodomy by force/violence/fear’ and ‘lewd or lascivious acts with a child 14 or 15 years of age’.
A $1million property on Wilbur Avenue in Northridge with a tennis court in the backyard is home to six pedophiles with some of the most heinous crimes on the statute books.
Resident Troy Garren, 51, spent around nine years in prison for continuous sexual abuse of a child. He got out in 2021.
His housemate Kenneth Parks, 72, was convicted of ‘oral copulation with a minor under 14 years of age or by force or fear’. James Andrews, 35, John Sharp, 55, Daniel Valdez, 57, and Jason Lucia, 30, all committed ‘lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age’.
The home is less than 2,000ft from Calahan Street Elementary School and 2,500ft from Options For Youth Charter School.
Dordulian, a veteran pedophile prosecutor who now represents victims of sex crimes, told DailyMail.com that letting predators congregate in homes could raise their risk of reoffending.
‘These guys all have their own little networks, especially online and sadly on the dark web,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be surprising to me if they all tell each other ‘well, you’re looking for a place, this is the place to come to.’ And that’s how they all end up congregating.
‘A lot of these guys look at child porn. If there’s that available and one shows it to the other, they’re going to bring those compulsions back for those guys, making it more likely that they’re going to go out and recommit.
‘There’s going to be greater exposure to the stuff that triggers their compulsion, which is discussion of children, pictures of children, child porn and the like.
‘This kind of a situation is going to create an environment where these pedophiles are going to have much greater opportunity, because no one’s monitoring them.
‘It’s terrifying.’
Some of the addresses where the greatest numbers of pedophiles registered were homeless shelters, halfway houses or sober living facilities often used by recently released convicts.
The Weingart Center, a Los Angeles homeless shelter, has 25 pedophiles registered there, the most in the state.
A halfway house called A Place of Comfort on the city’s Normandie Avenue is home to 24 predators according to the Megan’s Law database.
But many others were seemingly normal residential properties, like an eight-bed, 2,700 sq ft property on Walnut Avenue in Long Beach which houses 17 pedophiles, or a 5-unit apartment building on Orange Avenue in the city with four pedophiles that is less than 1,000ft from Franklin Classical Middle School.
DailyMail.com asked the California Sex Offender Management Board (CASOMB), an office set up by the Governor to monitor sex offenders, about these predator group homes.
Board Coordinator Lea Chankin responded that ‘California does not classify individuals on the registry as pedophiles’, and pointed to one of their 2016 reports which said: ‘For many years, CASOMB has recommended against adopting or continuing residence restrictions in California’ for sex offenders.
‘While the mission of the California Sex Offender Management Board (CASOMB) is to address issues, concerns and problems related to managing adult sex offenders in the community, the Board cannot comment on your analysis of data from the California Department of Justice,’ Chankin said in a statement last week.
‘Without reviewing the data and understanding the collection methods, any interpretation would be lacking context.’
She did not respond to an offer to share the data.
A spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) said the penal code stipulated ‘all registered sex-offender parolees shall not reside in a single family dwelling with any other sex offender, whether or not they are on parole, unless they are related by blood, marriage or adoption.’
However, DailyMail.com interviewed homeowners and lead tenants at homes where up to six pedophiles shared a room together.
A spokesperson for the California Department of Justice, which administers the Megan’s Law database, previously admitted to DailyMail.com that they were aware of predators’ group homes.
‘Because it can be difficult for folks to find housing, it’s not unusual for them to group together, if they find a place that works,’ a spokesperson said.
In a statement last month, the department said the issue was for District Attorneys, courts, and state legislators to deal with, but added that it has ‘Human Trafficking and Sexual Predator Apprehension Teams, which, as appropriate, regularly work with local authorities to protect public safety.’
Robin Sax, a former Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney who prosecuted pedophiles, said probation officers may even work with offenders to find these homes.
‘There’s a lot of limitations on where sex offenders can live. You can’t be within so many yards of a park or a school, places where kids congregate,’ she said.
‘It gets pretty limited theoretically, where these people can go. It doesn’t surprise me necessarily that you’d find clusters of areas where sex offenders congregate.’
‘If there’s a registered sex offender and they have a parole officer, and they’re trying to figure out where to live, and the parole officer knows that they have five more clients that have been able to successfully get houses in this particular area, that may provide some of the rationale as to how people ended up in the same area.’
‘A lot of these offenders have to take mandatory classes and programs and treatments, after they’ve been in prison, and so it’s also possible that in their classes and groups they’ve met each other and also found places to live.
‘The one thing that would be a massive concern is that we know that the movement of exchanging child pornography is done in a group format. That’s how images are shared. There is great concern of people in clusters operating with the same illnesses.’
It is unclear how prevalent ‘pedophile dens’ are in other states, as DailyMail.com was only able to obtain detailed offender data from the California Megan’s Law database.
Solutions in other states have included housing convicts of sex crimes in their own colonies.
More than half the 300 residents of Miracle Village, a tiny hamlet near Lake Okeechobee in Florida, are sex offenders. Newly released convicts are recommended the remote community in Palm Beach County, founded by a pastor, when they get out of prison.
Some California landlords receive cash from the state for housing pedophiles and other sex offenders in normal communities.
According to a 2010 report by the Orange County Register, landlords received a $1,500 monthly stipend through a CDCR program. One apartment complex owner in Alamitos Beach was reportedly packing up to six parolees in each unit – causing single women and families to flee from the risk.
The CDCR said it still has a limited policy of paying rent for some parolees.
DailyMail.com spoke to a manager at one Long Beach property, himself a convicted pedophile, who lives there with seven other child sex offenders.
Thomas Rowe, 69, was convicted in 2007 of lewd acts with an under-14, and has lived in the apartment block on West Wardlow Road since his release from prison in 2014.
Rowe said the CDCR doesn’t pay his tenants’ rent any more, but regularly places sex offenders in the four-apartment building he manages.
‘Two of our apartments are considered transitional housing,’ he said. ‘It’s a place where people try to put their lives back together, have a steady job, shower and prepare food.
‘Parole knows we have open beds, and then if they have someone who needs a bed, parole will send them in this direction.’
Rowe said he began managing the property soon after he arrived when he impressed the owner by doing repair work.
He said clusters of pedophiles are the result of restrictions on where they can live, and landlords’ reluctance to house them.
‘Part of the concentration thing you’re talking about is because of the limitations of where people can live. In those little areas that meet all those requirements – distances from schools, parks – those little areas become enclaves,’ he said.
‘I get the concept of protecting people. But at the same time there seems to be no concept of forgiveness.’
Rowe said he was proud of the property.
‘I run a pretty tight ship here. There are other facilities that are not quite as maintained … Bed bugs, people doing drugs, people having overnight guests, female or male, that shouldn’t be there, alcohol consumption.
‘The only thing that’s problematic with neighbors is kids will be playing with their balls and they come over the fence. We just pick them up and throw them back. I’ve never had any problem with the neighbors about our being here.
‘There’s no restrictions. You can have kids living right next door.’
Although CDCR said any single-family dwelling cannot house more than one sex offender, Rowe said they have many more.
‘We’re cramming five or six guys together into one apartment. They all have different work hours, different foods they like to eat and they’re all trying to use the same kitchen.
‘If there’s issues then I have to deal with those. You’ve got several people living together in a single apartment. They’re going to get on each others’ nerves, same as anybody else.’
Some houses and apartments are classed by CDCR as a ‘residential facility’ like transitional housing, where the limit does not apply.
Rowe said the only limit he was aware of was six parolees at any one address – which could mean a single apartment.
Residents include Antonio Cruz, 56, convicted in 2004 of lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 and again in 2018 of possessing over 600 child porn images including victims under 12.
There are four other sex offenders sharing one apartment with Cruz, including Luis Guerrero, 50, who was convicted in 2005 of continuous sexual abuse of a child and lewd acts with an under 14. He was released from prison in 2019.
Rowe said the property is within half a mile of a school and the residents’ bus route is also a common route for students.
‘Whether you take the bus north or south from here, you go right by a high school and a junior high school. In the school year at the wrong time of day that bus gets filled up with kids,’ he said.
‘It used to freak me out. Because I’m surrounded by a bunch of young people, I’m going to get in trouble, someone’s going to make a false claim against me. That was my biggest fear.’
A convicted rapist and landlord of a property in Downtown Los Angeles, gave DailyMail.com a tour of his five-bed home where he currently houses 11 pedophiles.
Eugene Hargro, 77, spent 11 years in prison until 1992 for a rape of a woman and forced oral copulation.
In his house on East 48th Street, tenants pay $675 per month to live two to a sparse room in single beds, all sharing the kitchen and living room.
The kitchen’s fridge was plastered with house rules including a ban on phones or laptops in the bathroom and no guests. Copies of Men’s Health magazine had been neatly placed on the living room coffee table, stuffed lion and panda toys sat on top of shelves by the television, and a real python basked under a lamp in a glass box in the corner.
Hargro said he knew some of his tenants were sex offenders, placed there by the local parole office, but said he was not aware their victims were children.
‘I try to provide a nice place for them,’ he said. ‘The parole department never tell me what their cases are. They just say ‘make sure they’re registered’.
‘I opened up a transition house and when they come I’m ‘Mr. Hargro’ now. I’m not a prison number any more. I’m a businessman.’
The home is a few doors down from a pre-school and a couple of blocks from an elementary. Neighbors said there are many families on the street and kids often walk by the house on their way to or from school.
Hargro said the schools were established after he started taking parolees, and that he didn’t see it as a problem.
‘You don’t just grab people and throw them out because they put a school right there. The school is not right in front of this house. Now, it could be a problem if it was, but it’s not. It’s way over there. And I was here first.’
Neighbor Ramon Nolasco, 74, disagrees.
‘This is dangerous for families around here. There are lots of families here, many schools. In the morning and afternoon there are a lot of students walking by here,’ he said.
‘They should be in other places where there are no families. But the government only talks, they don’t do anything. We feel abandoned.’
Other properties housing multiple pedophiles were less well-kept.
DailyMail.com visited a duplex at North Washington Place in Long Beach, where a plastic sheet covering its smashed front window flapped in the wind and a drug deal was in process upstairs.
Megan’s Law data says 13 sex offenders including eight pedophiles are registered there.
Resident Francisco Santos, 42, had a GPS ankle bracelet on. He claimed his sex offense was a relationship with a 17-year-old whom he married.
‘I’m not a pedophile, not a child molester. I was married to her for a few years. But they put me in the same cart as these others,’ he said.
‘They send me to group therapy, we all have to go to a program. I don’t like being around it, it’s poison to my brain. When somebody says ‘I molested my daughter’, I don’t want to hear that. That’s not me.’
Court records say in fact Santos was convicted of 10 counts of lewd acts with a 14 or 15-year-old, sexual penetration of a drugged victim with a foreign object, and sexual penetration of a victim under 18 with a foreign object.
At another dilapidated Long Beach property on Orange Avenue, home to four pedophiles according to the Megan’s Law database, one resident said the sex offenders lived among young families.
‘It’s kind of like living in the Twilight Zone, combined with a mental institution and being on the street,’ Lila Elle, 44, told DailyMail.com.
‘I’ve been on the streets, in jail, in these transitional homes. This building is up there.
‘There’s a lot of dope, a lot of drugs. I come from domestic violence.
‘These landlords, they pick certain types to live in these buildings. It’s a lot of convicts, a lot of drug addicts, so they can manipulate them.
‘There’s one family in the back. They have a little six-year-old. Another resident sometimes has his family over, they’re around six to eight. Definitely pedo bait.
‘Each unit is $1,675. There’s three of us in a studio, it’s about $575 each. Some of these transitional homes you’d have six girls in a studio in bunk beds.’
The property manager, convicted rapist Kenneth Henderson, 64, said: ‘There’s never been a problem here, and I’ve been here going on nine years … Everybody shares food, there’s barbeques.’
CDCR spokeswoman Terry Thornton said safety was the department’s priority.
‘When dealing with people on active parole supervision, our parole agents across the state work hard to ensure proper supervision and compliance of active parolees in the community, including those on state supervision for sex-related crimes,’ she said.
Thornton said all offenders on parole supervision have GPS monitoring.
She argued that properties highlighted in the investigation were ‘residential facilities’ and not a ‘single-family dwelling’, meaning the rules on the maximum number of sex offender residents do not apply.
Thornton also cited CDCR statistics saying sex offenders are less likely to reoffend.
‘The most current three-year conviction rate we have for all people released from prison is 44.6 percent, and for sex offenders it is 30.5 percent,’ she said.
A Canadian study from 2004 found child molesters with boy victims outside their families were the type of predator most likely to commit another sex offense, at a rate of 35% after 15 years.
A 2017 US Department of Justice memo cited an analysis of 94 studies which found sex offenders had an overall reoffending rate of 37%, with sexual re-offenses at 14% after five to six years.
Sex offenders are four times more likely than other criminals to be rearrested for a sex crime, according to the Justice Department.
Researchers also warned that not all reoffenders are caught.
‘You’re talking about people who, statistically studies show are more likely to reoffend,’ former pedophile prosecutor Sam Dordulian told DailyMail.com.
‘If they’re together, they’re just going to create this situation. A lot of these guys look at child porn. If there’s that available and one shows it to the other, they’re going to bring those compulsions back for those guys, making it more likely that they’re going to go out and recommit.
‘No one cares where they’re living. And they’re all congregating, as you apparently have discovered, with each other. And it’s scary.’
