THE country’s leading counselling and advocacy services provider for abuse victims does not want a sex offender register to be made public.

Dr Sandra Dean-Patterson, director of the Bahamas Crisis Centre, said a public register would be ineffective and would lure people into a false sense of security.

Her comments when contacted yesterday came after the government published draft regulations for a sex offender registry earlier this month on its website.

Many likely assume the sex offender register will be public, but neither the regulations nor the substantive law expressly state that the register would be accessible to the public. The law instead empowers the minister of national security to notify the public about the release of certain convicts after consulting the commissioner of corrections and the commissioner of police about the risk they pose.

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