Wednesday, July 13, 2011

How a Sex Offender Evaded the System

Manhunt

By DAN HARRIS (@danbharris)
July 12, 2011

Jaycee Dugard's horrific story of survival includes the failure of three separate governmental entities to properly supervise Phillip Garrido, the registered sex offender who repeatedly raped Dugard while he held her captive for 18 years.

The United States Parole Commission, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the local Contra Costa Sheriff's office all allegedly missed opportunities to stop Garrido's unspeakable abuse.

But of the more than 700,000 sex offenders in America right now supposedly under supervision, 100,000 are unaccounted for, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Another case that provides a blow-by-blow example of how easy it is for a convicted child sex offender to simply slip through the cracks, especially overseas, is the Michael Dodd case.

The FBI arrested Dodd in February 2010 and returned him to the United States from Cambodia, where he was serving time after being convicted of having sexual relations with a teenager, to stand trial. At the time, Dodd was facing a possible 30 more years in prison if convicted on new charges of traveling abroad to have sex with a minor.

"Nightline" tracked Dodd, 62, from the suburbs of Orlando, Fla., and upstate New York, to Cambodia last year before he was arrested.

We found him in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, where he was accused of attempting to arrange a marriage to a 14-year-old girl. At the time, Dodd was still on parole for abusing children in America, but got lost in the system.

Read the original story HERE and tune into "Nightline" tonight at 11:35 p.m. ET to see ABC's Dan Harris' latest report on the Michael Dodd case.

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