Norfolk native and convicted sex offender Bobby Moore molested a seven-year-old girl more than 20 years ago, and paid her a dollar not to tell anyone.
If Moore were staring you in the face, you probably wouldn’t know it.
A NewsChannel 3 investigation reveals Moore and nearly 20 other wanted sex offenders in Virginia have no image attached to their profiles on the state’s sex offender registry website (http://sex-offender.vsp.virginia.gov/sor/index.html).
NewsChannel 3’s Jessica Larche took action to find out why nearly 20 of the state’s more than 300 wanted sex offenders had no image. Were they impossible to find, or destroyed? Not the case as NewsChannel 3 was able to dig through decades old court records and more to track down three mug shots of the six wanted offenders connected to Hampton Roads without images on the sex offender registry website.
However, when NewsChannel 3 offered to give the findings to Virginia State Police, a local sergeant said they could not post the images to the sex offender registry even though NewsChannel 3 was able to prove the mug shots matched the offenders.
“If there’s no photograph it just means we don’t have one that’s current enough for our standards as defined by code,” said Virginia State Police Sgt. Charles Plaza.
“We cannot stick a photograph of someone even though we know it’s them,” he said. “We can’t put it on the website because it will compromise the integrity of our site.”
Rape survivor Barbara Shine said she is frustrated with the findings. Shine was raped more than 20 years ago in Maryland, but has since moved to Virginia as a rape counselor wit the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Alliance (http://www.vsdvalliance.org/). She regularly searches the sex offender registries in the tri-state area, wondering if her offender did time for hurting someone else.
“It sounds like too much bureaucracy, it sounds like too many barricades in the way,” said Shine, who is in the process of writing a book about her experience. “It’s very frustrating because I have no other clues to go on other than what he looked like, and what I can imagine he’d look like at this point.
“Am I going to run into him? Is he going to recognize me? Is he going to hurt me again? It’s a very difficult emotional situation,” said Shine.
Virginia State Police say they are able to access mug shots for some of the faceless offenders even though they do not post them all on the sex offender registry website.
Take a look at the video linked to this story, and if you recognize any of the wanted offenders, contact the Virginia State Police at (804) 674-2000.
If you are the victim of sexual assault, contact the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence 24 hour hotline at 1-800-838-8238.
