Trailer Park Has Almost 90 Sex Offenders

By CARLOS MONCADA The Tampa Tribune

Published: Aug 21, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG - From the outside it looks like any other mobile home park, with people ambling along narrow streets lined with trailers.

Yet Palace Mobile Home Park, in an industrial and commercial area off busy 54th Avenue North near Interstate 275, is different from any other in Pinellas County, the state's mobile home capital.

Nearly 90 registered sexual offenders released from state prison reside at the park, making up the majority of its population, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.

That's good and bad, said Sgt. Judy Vovan, who heads the sheriff's office Sex Offender Tracking Unit.

"No community wants that large a concentration of sex offenders in one area," Vovan said. "However, it's perfectly legal for them to be there."

The nonprofit group Pinellas Ex-Offender Re-Entry Coalition has used the park for transitional housing for several years, working with the Florida Department of Corrections.

Known as PERC, the coalition works to help reintegrate sexual offenders into the community through services such as housing, job placement and counseling.

Palace Mobile Home Park, 2500 54th Ave. N., has seen a steady increase in sexual offenders to 88, up from 55 two years ago, Vovan said.

No children and only a few adults who are not sex offenders live at the park, Vovan said. The park is at least 1,000 feet away from schools, day care centers, parks or playgrounds, as state law requires for certain registered sexual offenders.

The program is run by Nancy Morais, a motherly figure who is the coalition's transitional director.

"We monitor the men, and if we see anything out of color, we report it," she said from her cramped office at the park. "If we're going to watch them, it sure beats putting them under a bridge, where they'd be roaming free and have nobody watching them," she said.

Morais said no park residents have repeated their crimes. However, a former park resident, Samuel Matthews, was found guilty in federal court this month of trying to produce child pornography with an 11-year-old girl.

Vovan said the area is patrolled by two deputies with her unit. During a visit to the park this week, a sheriff's cruiser drove by twice within an hour. The offenders also are supervised by about eight probation officers who can conduct unannounced searches at any time, Vovan said.

"There's a lot of law enforcement that watch them," she said.

Some residents are arrested and sent back to prison for things such as violating terms of probation, failing a drug test or minor offenses such as battery, Vovan said.

Morais said there have been no complaints about the presence of sexual offenders from neighborhoods near the park.

"We've talked with [neighbors]. We've let them know," she said. "We don't hide the fact that we have them in here. We do let them know they're not predators and that we monitor them really close."

Morais said the transitional housing program was started years ago at the urging of former Pinellas Sheriff Everett Rice. She characterized a number of the park's sexual offenders as 19-year-old men who were convicted of having sex, often consensual, with their minor girlfriends.

"We don't try to get the worst of the worst in here," Morais said. "There are no John Coueys in here."

Couey was convicted of raping and murdering 9-year-old Jessica Marie "Jessie" Lunsford.

Reporter Carlos Moncada can be reached at (727) 451-2333 or cmoncada@tampatrib.com.