NY Daily NewsJudge: Two young girls must spend weekends with sex offender father
BY MICHAEL SHERIDAN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Monday, March 15th 2010, 11:23 AM
A family court is allowing two young girls to spend weekends with a sex offender.
Why? Because that sex offender is their father.
The unidentified man has been fighting his wife in court over visitation rights for nearly two years, after she left him following his child pornography conviction in 2007.
The man reportedly was convicted of filming and downloading images of child pornography on his computer, as well as creating links to child porn Web sites, according to The Australian.
The judge in Hobart, Australia, granted the father permission to have his children over on alternate weekends, but put in place a series of strict rules that must be applied.
Among them, the daughters must sleep together in a shared room, with the door locked at night.
An "adult friend" must also stay in the home when the girls - ages 10 and 8 - spend the night.
The judge argued the strict guidelines were important at night, but not during the day.
"When awake, dressed and together, it would be unlikely the father would act inappropriately toward them," a family court counselor told The Australian.
"However, at night, when they were asleep or partly asleep and not aware of each other's whereabouts, they would be less secure."
The decision has, not surprisingly, sparked outrage.
"He's on the register because a judge, another judge, in a criminal court understood that that's where he should be," child protection advocate Hetty Johnston told ABC in Australia.
"Decisions in the Family Court are supposed to be about the best interests of the child."
This is so messed up, a definite .