Parents tell their children to ‘memorize this face'

MONROE-A 43-year-old man living in Monroe was released on $500 bail earlier this week on a charge that he failed to registered with the Monroe Police Departmetn as a Level 2 sex offender. Douglas W. Sheley was convicted of the first-degree kidnapping of a 14-year-old girl that be brought to an abandoned building where he raped her in 1988. He was released from state Parole supervision on July 22, 2003. Monroe Police said sometime in the last year Sheley moved to Monroe and began living with a woman and her family. His conviction requires him to alert police of his whereabouts; police said he did not do this when he relocated from the Newburgh area to Monroe. On Monday, police have issued a sex offender community notification and copies of Sheley's mug shot. As a Level-2 sex offender, police may indicate a person lives within a community but not specify a street address. The level of risk is determined by the state. The notification included the warning that: "Anyone who uses this information to injure, harass or commit a criminal act against any person may be subjeect to criminal prosecution." Monroe-Woodbury school officials also sent homes letters to parents, alerting them of Sheley's presence in the community. Word filtered through the community quickly. "Having two small children of my own, the predator living in Monroe is just one more thing I need to worry about," Monroe resident Tom Dalton said. "The kicker was the flyer from the police that said do no harass him or threaten him. It's too bad the girl that he brought to the wearhouse didn't have the same form." Residents also expressed shock - shocked that he has going about his business like he was just an ordinary guy - to anger that the system let him slip through the cracks. "I am shocked," said one woman. "Especially that he lives on my street." "Our life styles are hampered," said another resident who lives on the same street. To another, a mother of two daughters, "It was like, oh my gosh, it's the fear. He did this to a girl who is almost the same age as my daughter." Mad is how one mother of three reacted to the news. Mad, she said, "because the police didn't know about it. He's a level 2 sex offender. It's very serious. He raped a 14-year old and now he's living near a school and a park." "He was only released in 1998 and the system lost track of him," the mother of a teenage girl said."He was living here and we didn't know. If they're not following through on these sex offenders, then what's the point in Megan's Law?" Some younger people who were interviewed reactly differently.While they agreed the public should have been alerted that a sex offender was in their midst, they did seem to feel that if he did his time (in prison) and had gotten the help he needed, let him live his life - he made a mistake. Meanwhile, some parents said they have shown Sheley's picture to their children and told them to "memorize his face."