A chain link fence separates the backyards of Chris Smith and the registered sex offender who propositioned his 10-year-old daughter.
A South Carolina man can’t understand why the registered sex offender who victimized his 10-year-old daughter gets to live next door, separated only by a chain link fence.
Chris Smith, of Conway, told the Sun News of Myrtle Beach that having Kerry Dane Marlowe for a neighbor is hell on his family. He said he would gladly move, but doubts he can sell a house next to a sex offender.
“When it’s all stripped away,” Smith told the paper. “I still have a convicted, registered sex offender living next door.”
Marlowe was convicted of criminal solicitation of a minor and forced to register after having a creepy conversation with the little girl through the fence that separates their yards, according to the paper. Smith said his daughter was playing with Marlowe’s cat when Marlowe asked her what size bra she wore and if he could rub lotion on her. He then exposed himself to her and leaned over the fence to kiss her, Smith said.
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When the girl told her father what had happened, Smith called the Horry County police, who arrested Marlowe, the Sun News reported. At a probation hearing before his sentencing, a judge ordered Marlowe to wear an ankle bracelet and stay at least a mile away from the neighborhood, according to the paper. But when he pleaded guilty to criminal solicitation of a minor and was sentenced to four years’ probation and to stay at least 30 feet from Smith’s daughter.
Local Prosecutor Candice Lively told the paper Marlowe admitted he was drunk and that he asked her if she would sleep with him. But she said he does not fit the profile of a sex offender. She said the court couldn’t force Marlowe to sell his house, but she told the paper she trusts Smith to keep his daughter safe.
“Her daddy makes me have no concerns about her safety,” Lively told the paper.
The Sun News was unable to contact Marlowe for comment, but his mother, Sally Osborne, said she doesn’t believe her son did anything wrong.
“If he did, he was drunk,” she said
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