Please find out for all who have been Swindled by Joe or Joseph Kovacs & Kristen who reside in 173 Matilda but filed Chapter 7 at 175 Matilda and also transfered the ownership to Father Joseph & Carol Kovacs
Is this "Grandfather" the same who is now hiding assets for his son?
Case highlights odd registry rules
PETE DALY, Staff Writer
05/29/2005
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TRENTON -- A recent Superior Court case highlights one of the peculiar rules by which some convicted sexual predators can’t be listed on New Jersey’s Internet sex offender registry, even if their crimes are severe.
On May 20, 70-year-old Joseph Kovacs was sentenced to five years’ probation for raping a 10-year-old girl three years ago, a crime that judge Bill Mathesius called one of the worst he had ever seen.
In 2002 Kovacs, of Thurston Avenue in Ewing, was charged with aggravated sexual assault, but pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child in January.
According to prosecutors, the sexual assault was so severe the victim, who’s now 13, needed surgery to repair her genitals. It was the second time he raped the girl.
Mathesius called Kovacs’ conduct "vicious, grotesque and unfathomable."
Noting psychologist reports that stated Kovacs was a danger to commit another sexual assault, Mathesius wanted to hold the suspect under house arrest.
But prosecutors let the rapist plead to a lesser charge of child endangerment to avoid making the young girl testify in court.
Kovacs’ sentence was influenced by the fact that Mercer County law enforcement said it couldn’t afford to keep the grandfather under house arrest.
The court required Kovacs to attend group therapy, ordered a psychological evaluation and said he must register under Megan’s Law.
But Kovacs won’t appear on the Internet registry because of the lesser charge.
Moreover, statutory rape, incest, sexual assault against an adult and sex offenses committed by juveniles are all crimes which do not require the offenders to be listed online.
"If the underlying crime involves a person having sex with an underage girlfriend, the community is not really at risk," said Jennifer Downing, a Mercer County assistant prosecutor and chief of the county Megan’s Law Unit.
"It’s the same with incest if the victims are family members or somebody that lived in the house. The logic extends to offenders as juveniles because they’re just so young that they should not be subject to the strictest portion of Megan’s Law," she said.
"If, despite the fact that a crime fit into one of those categories, we still feel the person is a risk, we don’t have to stick to the exemption."
Sex offenders who fight prosecutors’ attempts to list them on the registry use the incest exemption most frequently, according to a November 2004 report by the New Jersey Administrative Office of the Courts.
Offenders listed as the lowest risk to the community are placed in Tier I, a level at which only the police and not the public are notified.
"If the offender is a Tier I, I know they are there and the police know, but the public will never know," Downing said. "Registering and tiering are two separate things."
Downing said she often lectures at schools, police departments, and community meetings on the specifics of Megan’s Law and its implementation. Most are surprised to find the Internet registry does not include every type of sex offender, she said.
"Like it or not, Megan’s Law is not meant to punish. We cannot punish these offenders with it. It just means that now there’s going to be some notification," Downing said. "People don’t like to hear that."
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