Ohio ex-con receives data on neighbors

August 9, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

Neighbors routinely get a picture and a name when a sex offender moves next door. In a turnabout, an Ohio sex offender has received private information about his neighbors, including their Social Security numbers.

The material was shown to The Associated Press by convicted rapist Pearly Wilson, who was mistakenly given the information by a prosecutor. The data also contain the names, addresses and birthdates of nine of Wilson’s one-time neighbors on Columbus’ east side.

There was no indication Wilson misused anything in the files. Wilson, 80, says he came forward because he recognizes the irony of it falling into the hands of someone like him.

“Someone with a criminal mind could really use that information the wrong way,” he said.

The case also offers a view into a massive and controversial database designed to track criminals with the help of a raft of background information, including data on people whose only connection to a criminal is a similar address.

Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien took responsibility for the error, which he believes to be isolated.

Wilson’s former neighbors, meanwhile, are wondering why the government has data about them at all.

“They don’t need to be running my personal information,” said Don Hickman, 47, who still lives on the street where Wilson once worked as a live-in church groundskeeper. “I’m not a sex offender. I’ve done nothing wrong here.”

Neighbor information is useful to police when serving warrants, making family connections and finding fugitives, said Shannon Crowther, who heads technology services for the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office.

The information was released to Wilson last summer, as prosecutors were grappling with more than 7,000 lawsuits that sex offenders had filed against Ohio’s first-in-the-nation implementation of the federal Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act. The offenders’ challenges contend the federal law’s stricter classifications and longer reporting periods can’t be applied retroactively.

Wilson spent 23 years behind bars for raping a woman in 1976. He went back for six months in 2005 for failing to report an address change to the state sex-offender registry.

A voluminous litigator who acted as his own attorney, Wilson said he has an otherwise clean record. He waited almost a year to reveal what he had for fear it would jeopardize his ability to get off the registry. His obligation to stay on the registry expired in July.

According to the documents, the data on Wilson’s neighbors were part of a background check on him run through Matrix, the Multi-State Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange.