Helpless police to a sex offender with an anklet

Police caught a 26-year-old man, a sex criminal under monitoring known by his last name Im, after he called in a masseuse to his home and raped her. Im, who served in prison for 30 months for raping in 2007, was again sentenced to 30 months in prison for an attempted rape in 2010 and released in February. But police knew after the arrest that he was a dangerous man with an electronic anklet.

Im, serving in prison twice for sex crime, was not subject to the sex offender’s list disclosing their personal information. This was possible because sex criminals are not retroactively applied by current law. The Act on the Protection of Children and Juveniles from Sexual Abuse has been enforced since October 2010, while adult rape cases are subject to the Special Act on the Punishment of Sexual Crimes effective from April 2011. As Im committed crime before the special act became effective, he was not listed as a sex offender. There are many other sex offenders like Im since the law does not apply retroactively. This needs to be corrected immediately.

As the Justice Ministry does not send information to police for such reason, police cannot get any information on sex offenders at all. The Suwon Jungbu Police Station of Gyeonggi Province ascertained information on Im based on its own intelligence. Only two officials knew the fact: one detective at the station and one employee at Suwon Dongbu Station. That’s why five policemen of the Dongbu Station and four detectives of the Jungbu Station who went to the crime scene did not know this. How can police protect the people by loosely controlling sex offenders like this?

Police found Im’s house is only 500 meters away from the house of Oh Won-chun who committed the brutal rape-murder of a young woman in April last year. The two cases are under the jurisdiction of the same police station, Suwon Jungbu Police Station. In only one year since the Oh Won-chun case, another crime has been committed by a sex criminal with an electronic anklet in the nearby region. All this can be attributable to the lack of information sharing system and poor response by police.

Kim Seong-yong, the head of the Suwon Jungbu Police Station, said, “Policemen who arrived at the scene waited until things get cleared because they thought Im could turn into a hostage situation and threaten her life, if they break into his house.” Should the police knew that he had sex crime records with an electronic anklet, they would have responded differently.