No excuses for rapist on Facebook

Perhaps nobody would disagree with the assertion that imprisoned rapists, sex offenders and other dangerous people should not be promoting themselves at social media sites, and social media sites should not be allowing them to do that. Screenshot from a video recorded from prison by convicted rapist McClain Durst posted at Facebook. And state prisons should not be allowing it to happen. And JPAY, a communications company that provides services for prison inmates and their families to connect, should not let it happen. We, like many, were astonished this week to learn that a serial rapist, McClain Durst, convicted of multiple sex crimes in 2018 after a decade spent terrorizing and traumatizing young girls using social media apps to meet them, was back at it — on Facebook — from prison. From prison. Durst, at one time called the "Snapchat Rapist," when he was still free, would search social media sites for young girls and begin conversations with them, convincing them to meet him. In some attacks, he stalked them, showing up where they were, at their jobs, or at a gas station or convenience store. Eventually he would convince his victims to get in his car, and then quickly overpower and rape them. Durst was a registered sex offender who spent five years in prison, and, after he was released, he picked up right where he left off. His rape crime spree happened for years, seemingly almost unabated, and, heartbreakingly, even assisted by the incompetence of a now ex-prosecutor in Ottawa County after an investigation by the sheriff's office chockfull of missteps. One reader who contacted the Register after it was first reported said the news coverage that Durst was on Facebook left her nearly speechless. "I don't recognize this world we're living in," she told the reporter. The reporters, too, did not immediately follow up on the information because he didn't believe it could be possible that a serial rapist was posting videos of himself on Facebook, searching for friends to "kick it with," and pen pals to write to him in prison. When the Register inquired, the prison system quickly cut off Durst's access to JPAY. Facebook, too, within 24 hours, shut down Durst's Facebook page, which was being administered by a friend of Durst's who is not in prison, using Durst's JPAY account. That's all well and good. We're pleased to see that swift action was taken by the state prison officials and Facebook. But more must be done to assure that the breakdown — the cracks in the system that allowed a serial rapist to pitch himself onto an unsuspecting public and portray himself as an innocent man — will be patched. This needs to be fixed more fully, and we will ask and expect answers from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, from Facebook and from administrators at JPAY. Each part responsible for this should feel obligated to provide a full and detailed explanation of what went wrong, how extensive the problem might be and what steps are being taken to protect the public and the victims of crime from this happening again.