KINGSHILL — U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Denise George on Friday announced the arrest of Massachusetts native Daniel Cove.
Cove, 36, a registered sex offender was apprehended by Superior Court Marshals at the Village Rehabilitation Center in Sion Hill on Thursday.
He was arrested on a warrant, for failing to comply with registration requirements, the Virgin Islands Department of Justice said.
Cove was convicted on June 23, 2002, of indecent assault and battery on a child under age 14 in Massachusetts and sentenced to prison, according to the VIDOJ.
He says on social media that he studied “computer science” at Oxford High School in Massachusetts. Cove also said on Facebook that he is from Sterling, Massachusetts originally.
After his release in 2013, he moved to the Virgin Islands and registered as a Tier2 sex offender. He was therefore required to register every six months for 25 years. Cove was then arrested in 2016 on St. Croix, for failing to update his sex offender registration.
His last known verification date that listed his address as 11 Estate Diamond, St. Thomas was August 28, 2018. Cove’s location was therefore unknown as Investigators from the V.I. Department of Justice (VIDOJ) were actively searching for him.
A team of Special Agents from the VIDOJ with the assistance of other local and federal agencies, routinely conduct unannounced inspections of registered sexual offenders for the purpose of verifying their locations and other personal information, such as their work and home addresses.
The Attorney General/VIDOJ is legally mandated to administer and enforce the sex offender registration laws. Within three business days of arriving at a new location, a registered sexual offender must notify the VIDOJ of his/her name, residence, temporary lodging information, vehicle information, Internet identifiers, telephone numbers, school information and employment status.
Registered sexual offenders in the territory are prosecuted by the Attorney General for either failing to register or not keeping their registration current, as required by this law, and if convicted, the penalty is a fine of not less than $3,000.00 nor more than $5,000.00, or imprisonment for not less than three months nor more than two years, or both.
The law also provides that it is an offense to assist a sex offender to evade the registration requirements, which carries a fine of not less than $1,000.00 nor more than $2,000.00, or imprisonment for not more than six months, or both.
In 1997, the Virgin Islands enacted its first sex offender registration statute and in 2006, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 was enacted by Congress. Title I of that Act is known as the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act or SORNA.
This Act established a new baseline standard for states to track sex offenders, which required more unity and cooperation among jurisdictions in the registration and notification process.
On July 18, 2012, amendments were made to the local sex offender statute and the Sexual Offender Registration and Community Protection Act was signed into law in the Virgin Islands. Superior Court marshals were notified of Cove’s location and apprehended him.