I can look out my window and see a guy who raped a toddler talking on his cell phone.

He’s my new neighbor.

We received notification yesterday that a sexual predator now lives at the address diagonally across from my home.

I’ve been researching. I needed to know what we were really dealing with. I knew it wasn’t going to be good, but to my shock, I learned that this man’s charge of sexual battery against a minor under 12 is law-speak for sodomizing a 2-year-old boy in Eustis, in 1998, when he was 18. 

Since learning of this, I've been in total freaked-out Mama Bear mode. I’m usually not so emotional or on edge, but because I have two little boys who now have to live in close proximity to this man, I’m completely angry, disgusted, revolted, horrified. It’s in the pit of my stomach and the forefront of my thoughts.

I feel like I want to go confront him and tell him to go the fuck away, or say something along the lines of, “Kindly die, sir.”  

I know that people think, as I did, that there are rules. That someone with his record can’t live near children, schools, childcare centers. That’s true — but only if they’re still on parole. Our new neighbor has served his whopping 2 years and 29 days in prison and all of his parole. The law, in this case, is not on the side of protective moms with two young kids. He’s free to live wherever he wants. (One thing that gives me hope, though, is that he’s staying with whoever already lives there — it’s not like he signed a lease or bought the house. Maybe this will be short-lived.) 

My husband, who is also sick about this development, errs towards pragmatism, largely because (or so) I get to be the emotional one. Our kids won’t ever get near this guy, he says. They’re never outside without us; he hasn’t been arrested again for sexual battery since 1998; he probably just wants to be left alone. 

Yeah, so did that 2-year-old boy.

Even in the best-case scenario, this guy — whom the Orlando Sentinel reported was an aspiring youth pastor (eye roll) when he sexually assaulted the toddler he was babysitting all those years ago — was just a confused, horny, opportunistic teenager, in that particular one of the four "broad categories" of people who molest children, according to the Child Molestation Research and Prevention Institute.

Even if he’s mortified about his past and would never do that sort of thing again, I still don’t want him ever to even look at my kids. 

But the disconcerting truth is, these people are everywhere. A visit to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Website’s sexual offender tracker is hella unnerving. Within a mile radius of most people’s homes in St. Pete there are scores of sex offenders and, though less so, sexual predators. 

They’re around us on the reg, but unfortunately they don’t have to wear a scarlet letter. I really wish they had to do something like get tattoos that completely covered their noses so we could all see them all the time and shun them accordingly. 

Fuck forgiveness and redemption. There is no coming back from raping a toddler. 

This article appears in Feb 2-9, 2017.