Fullerton Residents Tell Council That Molester Must Go

FULLERTON —  About 50 residents Tuesday urged the City Council to help them find a away to get a child molester out of their neighborhood and to pressure state legislators to create laws that strengthen prison sentences for pedophiles.

The residents, who have been protesting the presence of twice-convicted child molester Sid Landau, said he is living in a motel that is surrounded by public and private schools and backs into a west Fullerton neighborhood. They called Landau a threat to the community and said the children in the neighborhood are in danger.

“You don’t place a child molester in the middle of a school zone,” said Don Rusk, who lives with his two elementary school-age children in the neighborhood.

Susan Carpenter McMillan, president of the statewide Women’s Coalition, asked city officials to urge the state Department of Corrections to crack down on child molesters.

“There is no cure for child molestation,” she said.

Though the council said it has no power to run child molesters out of town, Mayor Chris Norby said he plans to contact his state representative to ask for stiff prison sentences for child molesters. Councilman F. Richard Jones encouraged the residents to continue their protests.

“There is a fire in our midst . . . you can be the firemen, and I don’t think we’re going to cut your hose,” he said.

Landau’s attorney, T. Matthew Phillips, said his client should have the right to live wherever he wants.

“This is America, period. Fullerton, like it or not, is part of America. Fullerton, like it or not, must abide by the Constitution,” he said. “This is indeed a free country. Sid Landau may live wherever he wants, period.”

Phillips said Landau has moved but has not told him where he is staying.

Landau, 57, is the first person in Southern California to be identified under Megan’s Law, which gives law enforcement officials discretion to notify residents when a convicted child molester is in their midst.

He has moved three times since he was released from prison in November. Before he moved to the Fullerton motel, he lived in two locations in Placentia. There, the police distributed fliers to neighbors alerting them to Landau’s whereabouts.

The Placentia City Council on Tuesday night denied a claim filed by Landau as a precursor to a lawsuit.

Mayor Norman Z. Eckenrode said the city anticipated the claim but the council had only two choices: Risk being sued by residents or enforce Megan’s Law and risk being sued by Landau.

The city chose the later “because he has a history of real problems as far as molesting children, and we don’t need a person like that in our neighborhoods. He is the worst of the worst and we just couldn’t afford to look the other way.”

Fullerton police also passed out fliers but did not list his address. Police Chief Patrick E. McKinley said Megan’s Law “is a very good law.”