CINCINNATI (Reuters) - Edward Dion Burge had sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 24 and has dealt with the consequences ever since: Nearly a year in jail, hate mail and screamed insults from strangers.

A screenshot of the Nationsl Sex Offender Public Website, taken on May 31, 2007. The rules have made some offenders homeless, including five men in Florida who live under a bridge because no legal residence can be found. But fear and hatred of sexual predators and child rapists leave parents and politicians unsympathetic. REUTERS/www.nsopr.gov

What’s harder, eight years on, is finding a place to live.

Two years ago, Burge had made a home with his three kids and their mom in Piqua, Ohio, until police stopped by one Sunday afternoon to evict him. Burge had been out of jail for five years and finished probation, but he was a registered sex offender, and lived too close to a school.

“They gave me 10 days to move out. I moved to Dayton, and was ordered to move from there, then to Troy, and was ordered to move, then back to Piqua, and was told I was too close to a football stadium that a school used,” he said.

“It’s been a fight ever since,” said Burge, who now lives in a separate home near his family.

Burge, 33, is one of nearly 500,000 registered U.S. sex offenders subject to a growing array of rules about where they can live -- years after they’ve served their sentence.

The rules have made some offenders homeless, including five men in Florida who live under a bridge because no legal residence can be found. But fear and hatred of sexual predators and child rapists leave parents and politicians unsympathetic.

“They committed that crime, that is the penalty that goes with them,” said Chris Monzel, a councilmen in Cincinnati who pushed for stiffer laws to prevent an influx of sex offenders into his southwest Ohio city.

Like many U.S. cities, Cincinnati prohibits offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school. Monzel helped pass a law to expand that to day care, preschools, community centers and public pools -- effectively making 54 percent of the city’s residential area off-limits.

The increased vigilance has spread across the country.

A 2006 federal law requires offenders to register with police within three months of moving. Police then notify the community, usually by sending out postcards with the offender’s name, photo and address.

In addition, some 22 states have laws restricting where offenders can live, and hundreds of local communities have broadened exclusion zones from 1,000 feet to 2,500 feet.

Three states are considering special license plates for offenders’ cars. An Ohio legislator has proposed electronic ankle bracelets to monitor their whereabouts.

THE PEDOPHILE AND THE TREE

While sex offender registries have broad support from lawmakers, victim advocates and parents who want to check their neighborhood for dangers, the rules about where an offender can live have garnered mixed reviews.

Florida researcher Jill Levenson, who treats offenders and teaches at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, said residency restrictions may actually make offenders more dangerous.

Transient offenders struggle to hold jobs or stay connected with family -- two factors which could help them resist re-offending, she said. They also become harder to track.

One of Levenson’s clients, a mentally ill man who preys on pre-pubescent boys, is registered to live under a tree at night. He spends his days at his father’s and would like to live there permanently, but can’t -- that home is too close to a high school.

“So is it better to have a homeless, unmedicated potentially dangerous pedophile under a tree from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., and wandering around during the day? It defies logic,” Levenson said.

She said the laws also perpetuate fear of an attacker who is a stranger, though an estimated 95 percent of the 90,000 cases of child sex abuse reported annually are committed by family or friends.

Cincinnati’s Monzel, other lawmakers and even some police admit the laws are flawed because they treat all offenders the same, no matter the severity of their crime.

“We do need to have some kind of classification system to protect children from the worst offenders,” said Monzel. “I think the average person understands there’s a difference between a person who rapes a three-year-old and a freshman in college getting in trouble with his high-school girlfriend.”

Police departments also have mixed feelings. Keeping track of sex offenders, community notification and the changing residency rules is a challenge, said Steve Barnett, spokesman for the sheriff’s office in Hamilton County, a mostly urban district in Ohio.

“It’s getting to be an overwhelming task ... and it costs a ton of money,” said Barnett. He said the county sent out 208,054 postcards in the last four months to warn residents of new offenders in their neighborhood, at a cost of $50,088.

Still, parents like Aliza Zagorianos like the registries and the postcards, and say there should be more rules to limit not only where offenders live but where they can hang out.

“I get those postcards, I put them on my fridge, I study them,” said Zagorianos, 25, as she watched over her one-year-old son at a Cincinnati playground.

While she’s sympathetic to offenders who made a one-time mistake or committed a minor offense, Zagorianos said the safety of her child comes first.

“I do believe in second chances, but I don’t know about sex offenders.”