In less than one month, seven Long Island sex offenders have been arrested, most recently when Southampton Town police nabbed a woman at Kmart Thursday.
All were arrested for failing to register as offenders.
Cops arrested 49-year-old Katherine Lynn Hand Thursday while she was working at a Riverhead Kmart for failing to register her Hampton Bays address with the Sex Offender Registry.
The recent arrests have one Long Island politician worried.
“I’m extremely concerned about the influx of sex offenders,” said councilman Daniel Panico, who represents southeast Brookhaven.
Sex offenders, he said, are often placed in neighborhoods that are affordable, “which causes an infiltration of sex offenders in certain areas.”
One of those areas is Mastic Beach, in Panico’s district. The working-class, beachside town has 37 registered sex offenders.
“I don’t allow my 6- and 7-year-olds to play in the front yard,” said Maureen Getchell, a Mastic Beach website designer. “I knew there were a lot of sex offenders in the area, but not that many.”
She added, “As long as they register and I can see what they look like and where they live, that’s fine. It’s the sex offenders who don’t register that scare me.”
Doc: Sex offenders don’t start that way
Sex offenders are not born sex offenders, said Great Neck-based psychologist Dr. Andrea Macari. Sex offending follows a classical conditioning model that is learned behavior, she said. For the sex offender there is a pairing of children and sex, she said, for example through pornography — and from that moment on, children evoke sexual arousal.
