5 minute read
A sex offender wants to stay at the shelter, but it’s unclear
Not in my backyard sex offender unsure if he can stay
By Ellen Eldridge
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Steven Baumgartner is haunted by a mistake he made 33 years ago.
“I’ve got to tell everybody where I live ‘cause I messed up bad,” Baumgartner said. “I hate talking about it, but everybody keeps asking me. It’s something I’m not very proud of, and it tears me apart.”
It might tear him away from the one place he feels like calling home.
Baumgartner is a sex offender. He arrived at the Stay Plus Inn in Haines City two days ago, but legal restrictions might send him packing.
Inn owner Sean Cononie said Baumgartner will be forced back onto the streets if the sheriff’s office says a sex offender can’t live at the Inn.
“He’ll have to go, and he’ll have to be a transient,” Cononie said. “He was a transient when we got him.”
Volunteers picked Baumgartner up in Orlando Sept. 4 and brought him back. He’d been moving from group homes to the streets before landing at the Inn, where he hopes to stay.
“I would stay here forever if I can,” Baumgartner said. “It’s very peaceful.”
Cononie would like to house him. He says it’s better he provides low-income housing for sex offenders because when offenders are transient, tracking them is almost impossible. But, the families with children on the property want Baumgartner gone.
“Another resident knocked on my door about 6:30 or 7 o’clock in the morning and handed me a piece of paper — it was a printout saying he was a sex offender,” Annan Holcomb said. “Honestly, I flipped out.”
Holcomb and her four children, ages 13, 10, 8 and 5, arrived at the Inn in July.
After calling her mom and an aunt who Holcomb said works in the court system, Holcomb talked to Cononie about her concerns.
“It’s not legal for him to stay next to a school and
a church,” Cononie said. “That’s the way it is for most sex offenders.”
Restrictions on sex offenders ban them from living near schools and daycare centers, but a stranger sexually victimizes children only 7 percent of the time, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports.
Cononie said he would prefer to judge people individually by their past crimes, but he doesn’t think Baumgartner will be allowed to stay.
Baumgartner said when he goes to register as a sex offender, everyone in the office says it isn’t fair that he still has to register for a crime that occurred 33 years ago and that he served prison time for more than a decade.
“I fell with all that stuff a long time ago and they still want to hit me with it,” Baumgartner said. “I fell in 1982.”
The “no drinking, no drugs” rule at Stay Plus Inn doesn’t bother Baumgartner, he said, because he’s been off drugs for a year now.
Holcomb said because she used methamphetamine in the past she doesn’t believe drug abuse excuses sex crimes.
“The drugs, they say they change you, but not to that extent,” Holcomb said. “If you’re going to rape somebody, that’s just in you. That’s a monster you have.”
Time passing makes no difference to her, either.
“In my point of view, they cannot be rehabilitated,” Holcomb said.
“All I know is that in 1982 in Iowa he raped some
people,” she said. “I don’t care if it was a woman who was 30 years old that he raped. That doesn’t always mean that’s what he’ll stick to.”
Her 5-year-old will tell you that if he sees Baumgartner, he’s not allowed to talk to him because “he’s a mean man,” Holcomb said.
She warned her children about Baumgartner and showed them Baumgartner’s picture as soon as she got the flyer.
“I don’t believe you should sugarcoat the world for your kids because when you do, they go out there thinking it’s all sugar and lollipops,” Holcomb said. “And the world is not a nice place to live. I don’t care what perspective you come from: if you’re homeless or if you’re rich, it’s still not a nice place to live.” (Right) Baumgartner was given a hotel room on the farthest building away from the many children that are staying in the hotel. (Left) A page left on the ground of the Stay Plus Inn shows a photo of Steven Baumgartner, a registered sex offender. Photos by Stephanie Collaianni
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