More than 7,000 pedophiles convicted of “lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age” were released from California prisons the same year they were convicted, according to the U.K. Daily Mail.
The crimes included child rape, continuous sexual abuse of a child, sodomy with a child under 16 and kidnapping a child under 14 “with intent to commit lewd or lascivious acts,” according to the Daily Mail.
The outlet analyzed data on thousands of convicts in California’s Megan’s Law database and found that individuals convicted of sexually abusing children were serving only months in jail or prison; Megan’s law requires that certain information about convicted sex offenders be made public.
Daily Mail senior reporter Josh Boswell, who broke the story, told Tucker Carlson on Tuesday that he had to bypass limitations on California’s Megan’s Law website to gather statistics on registered sex offenders in the state as the California Justice Department refused to provide him with the data.
More from Fox News:
“I wrote a bit of code to pull down some of that public information….we asked them to give us the data, but they refused,” he said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” “so I had to write this script to put it together so I could show the public.”
Megan’s Law is a federal law that requires law enforcement to make information on sex offenders available to the public. It was passed during the Clinton administration after the murder of New Jersey 7-year-old Megan Kanka in 1994.
Boswell said the results of his search were “quite shocking,” pointing out specific examples of predators convicted of continuous sexual abuse of a child who spent just months in prison, and in some cases, just two days behind bars.
One of the sex offenders who was returned to the streets less than a week after he was convicted of continuous sexual abuse of a child now “lives one block from a daycare according to the database.” Boswell said.
The investigation examined 54,986 sex offenders listed on the Megan’s Law website as of July 2019 and found 76% of the offenders committed crimes involving kids. The data was determined by comparing the published dates of a pedophile’s conviction versus their release date.
“There’s a sense that maybe there are a few people who haven’t really been convicted of anything super serious. Actually, there are 19,000 of the 55,000 that we saw who are convicted of this molesting under 14 [year olds.] These are serious offenses,” Boswell said. “These are people that are spending a few months in prison for these really awful heinous crimes.”
A number of California officials who were asked about the report’s findings blamed policies endorsed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom which have allowed shortened sentences and early release for convicted criminals.
Boswell said he contacted the California District Attorney as well as Newsom’s office – both of whom deflected blame or ignored his inquiry on the issue.
Watch Josh Boswell on Tucker Carlson Tonight (Josh appears at the 16:35 mark of the video):
Proposition 57, a 2016 bill allowing early parole for nonviolent offenders that was supported by Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, is to blame for this string of early releases, Deputy District Attorney Jon Hatami told the Daily Mail.
“Thousands of child victims are being denied justice, and George Gascón and his group of radical prosecutors can care less,” Hatami told the outlet.
