A Florida mom is here to kick ass and chew bubblegum and she’s all out of bubblegum…

The Orlando Sentinel (from the AP) reports on a Florida mom who doesn’t allow sex offenders to live without consequences outside of prison. She hunts them down, gets the locals involved and makes it crystal clear to these heinous criminals that she’s watching their every move. (Oh, ho, ho. I think this mom ROCKS!)

TAMPA. Judy Cornett could hardly be more conspicuous. She’s zipping around a tough west Tampa neighborhood in a white convertible with two local kids riding shotgun, her dog sitting up in the back.

“Don’t worry, I’m not a cop,” she says as she slows down to talk to some teenagers hanging out on the corner. “Do you know there’s a sexual predator living on your street?”

The youngsters crowd around and Cornett shows them the man’s picture on a computer printout. She points out the corner house where he lives, warns them to be careful and be sure to keep an eye on the little ones. Then she’s off.

The 44-year-old former nurse is determined to try to protect the children in one of the city’s poorest areas from falling victim to sex offenders and the kind of crimes that nearly tore apart her own family. She drives the streets to make sure freed sex offenders, who are required by law to register their addresses with the state, are where they’re supposed to be and that the neighbors know them, too.

“Nobody else is watching these guys,” she says.

Cornett quit her $70,000-a-year job running a medical clinic to start a nonprofit group aimed at keeping kids safe and standing up for crime victims. She was seen recently standing with the family of Carlie Brucia as the 11-year-old Sarasota girl’s killer was tried and sentenced to death. The case gained national attention because Carlie’s February 2004 abduction was recorded by a security camera and broadcast around the world.

Earlier she had befriended the father of Jessica Lunsford, the 9-year-old Citrus County girl raped and killed by a sex offender last year, a case that prompted efforts around the country to crack down on those who prey on children. She still keeps in touch with both families.

So zealous is Cornett that she posed online as a 15-year-old boy last year to trap an Internet predator, turning her evidence over to sheriff’s office investigators and a local TV station. The 45-year-old man is now serving an 18-month prison sentence.

“Too bad we don’t have more people like that who take their time to go out and look for these people,” said Carlie Brucia’s stepfather, Steven Kansler. “She’s determined, that’s what she wants to do, and I give her all the credit in the world. She’s basically put her life on hold to track these people down.”

Cornett spends so much time dogging pedophiles because she takes their crimes personally. One of her sons was 11 when he was abducted and raped in 1992 by a young man named Kevin Kinder, who also admitted performing lewd acts on three other boys. The trauma ripped apart her son’s life, and he’s carried the emotional scars into a difficult adulthood.

She turned into a rabid activist when Kinder was released six years into a 17-year sentence because of prison overcrowding. Outraged, she took it upon herself to expose Kinder as a sex offender wherever he went, going door-to-door every time he moved, passing on tips to his probation officer and taking her story to the media.

Judy’s tenacity and determination to protect the public makes me wonder why it’s a private person doing the work of the law enforcement and the courts? While she’s not earning any points with those sex offender sympathizers, she’s rising up for the rest of us who think that no punishment is too great for an adult that violates a child.

Cornett has little time for critics who say such scrutiny of sex offenders who have completed their prison sentences impedes their ability to assimilate back into society and lead productive lives. And she has little sympathy for those who become victims of vigilantes, such as the two sex offenders who were fatally shot in Maine last month.

Bookmark to: