Being a registered sex offender, whether the crime involved violence or not, creates numerous obstacles in daily life, and one of those is finding a place to live.

Numerous state and federal laws enacted over the past 30 years have required sex offenders, after they’ve done their time, to register on a publicly-available list and prevent them from living in certain areas. Many websites and some law enforcement agencies notify residents of neighborhoods when a sex offender is moving into their area.

James Henthorn was convicted of attempted rape in 2006. He is now out of prison and designated a registered offender for another two and a half years. Henthorn, with the help of his Marietta attorney, Ray Smith, believes he has found a flaw in the system that makes it even more difficult for him to find a place to live.

Registered sex offenders in Ohio are excluded from living anywhere within 1,000 feet of a school, daycare or preschool, but Smith said he discovered anomalies in what constitutes 1,000 feet.

“I did help him,” Smith said Wednesday. “I went to the county tax mapping department.”

The county has a Geographic Information System that can be used to measure distances between parcels of land..

Henthorn said Smith found two examples in which the county’s system and the one used by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office deviated enough that one would exclude him from living in a specific location while the other would allow it.

“I don’t know how the sheriff measures it, but the law is what the law is, and we want to make sure it’s applied correctly,” Smith said. “It’s also used in drug cases to determine proximity to schools.”

The law provides an additional penalty for drug dealing if it occurs near a school.

The sheriff’s office uses a third-party vendor, WatchSystems, Inc., of Covington, La., to map the exclusion zones, the same company that provides that service to all Ohio counties, Sheriff Larry Mincks said.

Sgt. Patrice Tornes supervises registration of sex offenders in the county and uses the WatchSystems mapping to determine where they can and cannot live.

Tornes said she didn’t know what parameters WatchSystems uses to measure the distance, whether it is from a building or from the property lines, but she said she has physically checked measurements from specific sites, such as the Ely Chapman Education Foundation, which provides daycare and after-school services for children, and found it to be accurate.

Tornes said as of Tuesday there were 121 registered sex offenders in the county. When the exclusion zones are removed from schools, daycares and pre-schools, it leaves a vastly reduced selection of housing, she said.

“It’s really tough for them to find a place,” she said.

The Ohio Revised Code covering the rules specifically states that measurements from daycares and preschools are to be taken from the portion of the property normally in use by children, which would include an on-site playground or outdoor area, but the code is less specific about schools. If measurements are taken from the property line rather than the buildings, the exclusion zone around schools on large pieces of property, such as Marietta High School or Middle School, would be significantly bigger.

The Times was unable to contact WatchSystems to determine how its system works. Asa Spaziani, the GIS specialist in the county tax mapping office, said its system can measure any distance between two points clicked on the map but generally the distance between properties is determined from property lines, not structures.

Tornes said sex offenders tend to move around a lot, in part because of their status – they are generally not welcomed in neighborhoods, which are notified when they move in, and they also have trouble getting and keeping employment for the same reason.

Only two of the 121 are currently homeless, she said, and those two have to check in with the sheriff’s office daily until they find a home.

“Overall, we have very minimal problems with sex offenders,” she said.

Although Marietta is full of exclusion zones, she said, it can be much worse in small communities. Some offenders want to return to their home villages and towns but can’t live there because all the housing might be within 1,000 feet of a school in the center of town.

“People want to go back where they came from, and they can’t,” she said.

Henthorn said he has had problems finding a place to live since he was released. He’s now living in a camper on the property of a friend while he continues to search for his own place.

“There’s no place I can live, I still consider myself homeless,” he said. “It takes up a lot of time, trying to find a place, and trying to find a job.”

By the numbers

• Number of registered sex offenders in Washington County: 121.

• Exclusion zones for living: Within 1,000 feet of a school, daycare or re-school.