Iowa authorities are discovering some women who have kids and a live-in boyfriend who’s been convicted of a sex crime are tying the knot. The Marshall County attorney says at least two Marshalltown women have married convicted sex offenders in order to get around a new state law. That law allows authorities to file child endangerment charges against women with children who knowingly let a sex offender live in their home. Marshall County Attorney Jennifer Miller says area law enforcement did a check of residences where sex offenders were living, and found one living with a woman. “Subsequent to that we discovered some other individuals who may be in violation of these laws and to get around that, they began to marry the sex offenders they were living with to get around the law,” Miller says. The new law enforces other living restrictions, barring convicted sex offenders fro living within two-thousand feet of a school or day care. Miller says in Marshall County, that means sex offenders will have to live in very small towns. There’s nowhere in the city limits of Marshalltown for sex offenders to legally live because of the new restriction. “There are a few towns…that do not have a school or a day care within the town limits and so sex offenders will likely be seeking housing in smaller communities in Marshall County.” Officials in many other Iowa counties report the same situation: sex offenders may be forced to live in very small Iowa towns which do not have a school or day care center. One problem, though, is many sex offenders have given officials an address to meet registration requirements, but they aren’t living there. Miller, the Marshall County Attorney, says that’s what they found in the Marshalltown area.”When police officers served notice upon those individuals that they were in violation of the 2000 foot law, they discovered almost 30 of those individuals were not actually living at the residence listed on the sex offender registry,” Miller says. There are about 100 known sex offenders living in Marshall County, according to Miller.
