Such stories have become increasingly common in New Jersey since Megan’s Law took effect in early January. The statute requires police to notify neighbors when a sex offender like Marter moves into the area. By the weekend, Marter, who served 16 years after enticing a 7-year-old boy into his car and then fondling him, had been “ridden out of town on a rail,” remembers Holt; parole officials moved Marter to the neighboring town of Beverly. “It was fear,” says Mark Minton, building manager of Marter’s rooming house in Riverside. “He was afraid someone might kill him.”
Within another week, neighbors had hounded him out of Beverly, too. “He basically got chased up the Delaware River,” says Mark Waligore, managing editor of The Trentonian, a tabloid that covered the story closely. According to his elderly aunt, Marter now sells newspapers in Trenton and lives anonymously in a single room. “He calls me from time to time to say he’s OK,” says the aunt, Harriet Chew. “He’s been through enough.”
Megan’s Law, named for a 7-year-old who was raped and killed last year by a sex offender who had moved quietly into her New Jersey town, may not stand. Four legal challenges are pending in the state. Though many jurisdictions require sex offenders to register with local police, the idea that the authorities should then notify the whole neighborhood has already been struck down in three states.
Critics contend that Megan’s Law is not only unconstitutional but also encourages vigilantism. Indeed, two men recently broke into an apartment in Phillipsburg, N.J., where they thought child molester Michael Groff was staying. They attacked the wrong man. Groff, likeMarter, is now on the move again. “I don’t feel sorry for the criminal at all,” says Carolyn Holt. “I don’t care how much time they serve, it’ll never be enough.”
