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Lorie Harnden, whose daughter is a first grader at Fairmount Elementary School, is just one of several anxious El Cerrito parents awaiting the arrival of a service signed into law Friday by Gov. Schwarzenegger that allows the Department of Justice to post information about registered sex offenders on line. 

Harnden and other Fairmount parents are well aware of the law because two weeks ago they learned that a school neighbor, Paul Alfred Jagoda, 57, was arrested in a Sacramento hotel by the Department of Justice on charges of attempted child molestation. 

The legislation that created the law, AB 488, was introduced by Rep. Nicole Parra, D-Hanford, and endorsed by the California Attorney General. It will update and expand services provided under a provision called Megan’s Law, which has made sex offenders’ information public since 1996. The law is named after 7-year-old Megan Kanka, a New Jersey girl who was raped and killed by a neighbor with a sex offense record that was unknown to Megan’s parents. 

Until now the information could only be accessed through a Megan’s Law database maintained at law enforcement agencies that serve populations of over 200,000. The new law will make the database of sex offenders available over the Internet. 

Not only should sex offender’s information be listed online, said Harnden, they should also “have to wear a hat that says ‘I’m a sex offender.’” 

According to the attorney general’s website, the new online system will have detailed physical descriptions along with a home address and picture if available, for the most serious offenders, including sexual predators and those classified as “high risk,” and “serious.” The service must be running on or before July 1, 2005. 

A serious sex crime offender is defined by the attorney general as someone convicted of committing a lewd act upon a child under 14 or some one who committed a sex crime that includes elements of force or fear. Examples of serious crimes include rape, child molestation, sodomy with a minor or by force, oral copulation with a child or dependent adult, and abduction of a child for purposes of prostitution. 

High risk sex offenders are defined as “serious sex offenders who have been convicted of at least one violent sex offense and a combination of other offenses.” 

In El Cerrito there are 13 serious but no high risk offenders whose information will be available. Their crimes range from rape, to lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14, to continual abuse of a child, according to information the Daily Planet found on the Megan’s law database at the Alameda county sheriff’s department. 

“I never though about looking [sex offenders] up [on a Megan’s law database] because to get up and go to a police station, I don’t have that time,” said Lashelle Jones, who has one daughter at Fairmount. “But if it was on the Internet I could do it at work.” 

Angelique Shaw, 15, whose two younger sisters go to Fairmount, is a student at El Cerrito High. She said she is going to use the service and encourage her friends to do the same because they are constantly approached by older men. 

“High school girls are gullible, they want to meet older guys because they think it will make them cooler. If you run into a desperate girl and she needs a boyfriend, she’ll talk to anyone,” she said. 

According to information released by the attorney general, over 85,000 of the state’s 101,589 registered sex offenders are classified as high risk or serious. The remaining 16,307 registrants, classified as “other,” will still have their information published on the website but their zip code will be released instead of their home address. 

El Cerrito Detective William K. Zink said he doesn’t see the need for El Cerrito’s sex crime offenders to have their information listed on the Internet. He said that accessing the Megan’s Law database at the sheriff’s office was enough public disclosure. 

Zink, who is in charge of registering the sex crimes offenders every year by state law said he hasn’t had a problem keeping track of them. Four of the city’s 13 serious offenders are in violation because they failed to re-register, but he said that’s because they fled the country and have not come back. 

“I don’t think publishing their address is going to accomplish much, other than to create some hysteria,” said Zink. 

The decision by the governor brings California into line with more than 30 other states that already post varying amounts of information about their sex offenders on-line. Like the laws in those states, AB 488 has been opposed by groups who say posting information on the Internet is a violation of the offender’s due process and privacy rights. 

Francisco Lobaco, the director of the legislative office of the ACLU in Sacramento, said the law violates due process rights because the state should have to establish that the defendant will continue to be a risk before they posts the defendant’s information. 

“There is no wash out clause in the legislation,” he said, for those who committed one crime years ago and are “otherwise leading a law abiding life.” 

For parents like Jones, however, intrusion on someone’s privacy is not her main concern. 

“If [a molester] has done their time, you want to give them a second chance,” she said. “But what if they go and re-offend, that’s not like robbing a store. You can’t return a child’s childhood 

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