By Corey Kilgannon
New York Times
January 24, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/nyregion/24mastic.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
MASTIC, N.Y. — Last Thursday, a sixth grader waited for the school bus across the street from her house in this working-class community on Long Island.
Before the bus arrived, a burgundy Hummer with no license plate pulled up. The driver lowered the window.
"He told her, 'If you get in, I'll give you a ride to school,' " recalled the girl's father, Richard Alliegro, 51. "She told him no, but he kept trying to talk her into it. Then the bus pulled up and she ran on, and the guy drove away."
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| Richard Alliegro, whose daughter, a sixth grader, was approached by a driver at her school bus stop in Mastic, N.Y. Photo by Ed Betz |
Mr. Alliegro said that his routine warnings to his daughter about strangers had intensified lately because, in the past few weeks, two students at William Floyd High School, just down the road, had been sexually attacked near their school.
Those attacks have sowed fresh fear and frustration in an area with one of the highest concentrations of registered sex offenders on Long Island.
According to the state's Sex Offender Registry, there are more than two dozen registered offenders living in the ZIP codes served by the local school district. In Mastic Beach alone, a community of about 12,000 that is where the high school is, there are 17.
On Jan. 7, according to the Suffolk County police, one student was confronted by a man who pretended to be an undercover police officer and who sexually attacked her in an abandoned camper in a lot across the street from the high school. The police arrested Gary Meenahan of Shirley and charged him with sexual abuse and criminal impersonation. He is not a registered sex offender.
Earlier last week, a teenage girl said that while cutting across a field on her way to the high school, she was thrown to the ground and fondled before she managed to escape. There has been no arrest in that case.
On Tuesday, the Suffolk police announced that they had arrested a 39-year-old Mastic Beach man in the case of Mr. Alliegro's daughter. The man, Wayne McGowan, was on probation in a federal drug case, the police said. They charged him with stalking and aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle.
After his arrest, Mr. McGowan told reporters he was not guilty.
"As soon as I can sell the house, I'm moving away," said Mr. Alliegro, who built his two-story Cape seven years ago on Madison Street, in this area just west of a more affluent stretch of towns leading to the Hamptons. "You can't even let the kids outside anymore. My daughter doesn't want to stand at the bus stop.
"She doesn't understand what could have really happened to her."
On Friday, the Suffolk police announced an increase in local patrols and in video surveillance, and sent detectives to the houses here of all Level 2 and Level 3 registered sex offenders — those classified as posing the highest risk. Police officials have scheduled presentations by state probation officials to local students.
Major crime has declined in the area, Richard Dormer, the county police commissioner, said, but he added that "these recent high-profile and serious incidents require specialized attention" to restore a sense of security in the community and to "reduce the fear factor."
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| Wayne McGowan |
The commissioner said there was no immediate indication that registered sex offenders were involved in any of the three cases. But that has done little to placate local residents, who attribute the recent attacks, and the high number of sex offenders living here, to poor laws and neglectful politicians.
They say the area known as the Mastics has become a dumping ground for sex offenders because of the low rents charged by absentee landlords happy to accept anyone who pays regularly or has subsidized rent checks sent directly through the county's Department of Social Services.
"It's terrifying — it's like living in a prison, and people are terrified," said Laura A. Ahearn, executive director of Parents for Megan's Law, a nationwide organization that is based in Suffolk County. Megan's Law requires that communities have access to information about convicted sex offenders.
Local elected officials have been working to diminish clusters of sex offenders like the one in Mastic Beach and got a county law enacted in June that forbids sex offenders from living within a quarter-mile of a licensed school, playground or day care center.
Tempers have raged before. In 2006, a Mastic man with a young daughter was arrested and charged with plotting to set fire to a house here with four male tenants who had recently served prison time for crimes including rape and sodomy of girls. The man, Donald Keegan, now 37, pleaded guilty and has begun a prison sentence of up to nine years.
Local schools have begun using a mass telephone alert system that automatically notifies parents if a sex attack occurs in town. The school also notifies parents when a sex offender moves to the area.
"Every week we get these notices that more sex offenders have moved in," said Kim VanGordon, 26, of Mastic. "We know who they are, and where they live, but why are they even allowed here?"
She said her son, an 8-year-old third grader, had just begun walking on his own the two blocks to the bus stop. That ended when news of the sex attacks came.
"I told him, 'Sorry, but I can't let you out by yourself anymore,' " she said. "I was blunt about why: I told him there are people who do nasty little things to little boys and girls."
On Friday, in a case that was described as unrelated to the cases involving the students, the police said that a member of the custodial staff of the William Floyd School District had been arrested in connection with the rape of an acquaintance of his.
Several students at William Floyd High School said on Friday that security guards are not effective at enforcing the school's closed-campus policy, under which students may not leave during breaks in the school day.
Viviane Trudel, 15, a ninth grader on the track team, said announcements were made at the high school warning students of the attacks and urging caution. Certain activities have been altered, she said.
"We have to run on the old track because the new one is further away and they're afraid of us walking there by ourselves," she said.
Students said many of them began staying home after the attacks, at either their parents' request or their own.
Mr. Alliegro, whose daughter attends William Floyd Middle School, said: "I tell my daughter, 'Don't get in anyone's car, even if it's a police officer.' It's sad because you want to keep them young — you're torn — you want to let a kid stay a kid, but not telling her could cost her her life."
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