By the end of this month when he would be out of jail, he would still not be in freedom. That is the plight of 45-year old Geoffrey Ball, a New York resident accused of being a serial sex offender. He was sentenced to a 16-month jail term January, last year after he breached police sex ban. The police order, however, added a caveat: in the event that he could not do without sex, he should give the authorities a 24-hour notice before having sex with any woman.
Though the trial judge admitted that the ban was ‘draconian but necessary,’ Ball was convicted for contravening the order. The jail term was handed down when he was found guilty of failure to notify the police and also tell his story to any new female acquaintance.
Ball, who claimed he did not remember that he committed the offence because he was ‘5 out of 10 on the drunk scale’, was however said to have boasted to the boyfriend of the daughter of the 50-year old victim he ‘banged her in an alley’. He was guilty of failing to stay away from women, if he could not intimate them of his weakness.
Now that he would be preparing to get out of prison at the expiration of his term, his worry would be how to keep away from trouble.
Perhaps he would learn to stay away from pubs, where he ran into the woman he boasted that he ‘banged’. The woman’s daughter and her boyfriend claimed that she was drunk before Ball accompanied her to her apartment, where the two witnesses confirmed they had sex.
The argument of the police was that had Ball told the unnamed woman who he was she probably would not have been alone with him. Then, he was believed to have taken advantage of the woman’s drunken state. Now, Ball would to need pay attention to his character. He surely needs help. Joanne Kidd, the prosecutor told the court that Ball was a ‘registered sex offender’, having been reported for sexual assault in 2015, four years after he was convicted for a similar offence. What that means is that soon as he leaves the prison, he would come under police surveillance.
