Are We Really Equipped to Handle This Information?

After he moved into the home of friends in a quiet middle-class Placentia neighborhood last month, Sidney Landau was as welcome as a toxic waste dump.

Maybe less.

Neighbors heralded his arrival by picketing, with signs and bullhorns. They called 911 each time he left the house and walked to the bus stop.

Landau, 57, has the distinction of being a guinea pig of sorts in the great debate over how to deal with child molesters who finish their prison sentences and are released into the community. He is believed to be the first convicted sex offender in Southern California whose neighbors were notified of his criminal past in accordance with the newly enacted “Megan’s Law.” That, I suppose, makes the neighbors guinea pigs too.

On Dec. 7, a police bulletin was distributed within a three-block radius of the modest beige house on Gehrig Avenue where Landau has been staying. The bulletin--with Landau’s picture, address and physical description--carried this warning: “Recently, a serious sex offender has registered with the Placentia Police Department. This individual is a convicted child molester. Terms of his parole preclude contact with children. We are providing this information to you in order to protect yourself and your children.”

There was also a second warning, in larger and more commanding type: “Any person who uses information from this section to commit a crime against a sex offender can be punished by up to five years in prison.”

We may be handing you a weapon, in other words, but we will prosecute you if you use it.

Five weeks after the police bulletin went out, days after it was covered by newspapers and TV, Landau said he was fired from his thrift store job. Neighbors, who fretted initially about his presence, are now worried that he won’t be able to finance a move to a new neighborhood.

“Some people,” said Landau, a twice-convicted offender who recently served eight years for performing a lewd act on an 8-year-old boy, “just want me to put a gun to my head.”

He’s right, of course. And such an event is not unprecedented.

Father Ted Llanos, a former Long Beach pastor who had been accused of sexual molestation by five parishioners, committed suicide in Washington, D.C., last month.

According to the mother of the first young man who accused Llanos of sexual abuse, her son’s reaction was: “Well, Mom, now we don’t have to worry about him harming anyone else.”

But is this really the “solution” we seek?

*

Landau was sitting in the frontyard the other day in jeans and an old white T-shirt, staring at his hands, intently trimming his cuticles with what appeared to be a small, straight-edged razor.

For a man who has been hounded out of a job and picketed at home, he did not seem particularly apprehensive. He did not look up as a stranger approached, did not look up as she introduced herself, did not look up as she explained why she had come.

“I’d like to talk to you about Megan’s Law and what your plans are now that you’ve been fired,” said the stranger.

There was an awkward silence, then Landau stood and walked into the garage. Just before he closed the garage door, he said bitterly, “You got a job for me? I had a good job. It was taken away from me because of the media.”

True.

But a small price compared to the one paid by the little boys whose bodies and trust he violated.

*

Los Angeles County, with a population of nearly 9.4 million, is home to about 17,000 registered sex offenders--”290s” in the penal code-based parlance of cops. Megan’s Law is, of course, an attempt to address the deeply troubling issue of how to protect our children from these criminals once they have served their time. They are often repeat offenders, yet we can’t keep them in prison forever.

Not that we aren’t trying.

Some states, including California, have passed laws allowing authorities to keep convicted sex criminals in mental hospitals after their prison terms expire. If courts find these laws unconstitutional--and each has been challenged as a violation of the principles of due process and protection against double jeopardy--then what?

Do we really want to hound sex offenders out of thrift store jobs into suicide?

Do we want to condemn them to wander the Earth, never putting down roots, never developing any sense of responsibility toward the communities whose trust they have so deeply breached?

Maybe we’d prefer not to think about them at all, but now, of course, that is impossible since the law says we must be notified.

Which gets, I think, to another tangle in this skein. We say we want the information. But are we really equipped to handle it? Megan Kanka’s life might have been saved if her parents had known the history of the child molester who moved into the neighborhood.

On the other hand, would you sleep better at night knowing someone like Sidney Landau has moved in down the block?

* Robin Abcarian co-hosts a morning talk show on radio station KMPC-AM (710). Her column appears on Wednesdays.