As registered sex offenders grow older, many find it difficult to find adequate assisted living or nursing home care in states with strict residency restrictions.
Reporter Nicki Gorny reports in the Ocala (Florida) Star-Banner about the challenges many of these people face.
By the time deputies arrested Thomas Bernard Brown for failing to register as a sexual predator, he had built up a 10-year record of consistent registration in Marion County.That’s 42 check-ins, as his attorneys and his friends pointed out at a sentencing hearing in June. When it came to No. 43, Brown, 72, who has since been diagnosed with early stages of dementia, says that he simply forgot.“My only crime, your honor, is that I have become old and forgetful,” he told Circuit Judge Robert Hodges that day.
Related: An elderly registrant faces eviction from a Florida hospice because it’s too close to a pre-school. Story here