KALAMAZOO, MI --

A pretrial hearing is scheduled Monday, Jan. 13, for a 61-year-old man accused of sexually assaulting three teenagers at his Kalamazoo Township karate school.

Authories say, meanwhile, that nothing in Michigan law prevented Robert Earl Keith, a registered sex offender who served prison time in Florida, from opening a karate business in 2009 and teaching to children.

Robert Keith

Keith, who

with criminal sexual conduct involving three alleged victims ages 15 to 17, is awaiting trial in Kalamazoo County Circuit Court. Authorities say he gave karate instruction to the teens from his home on Nazareth Road, a dojo operated under the name of Keith Karate Center and Keith Sonkei Dojo.

"After they joined the club, Keith approached all of the boys individually and he said that part of the process of getting your black belts is that you have to join a secret society and part of the secret society is pleasing your master,â

âAnd part of that would be that you would have to do oral pleasure and oral stimulation ...â

Michigan

report in person to their local law enforcement agency, sheriffâs office or nearest Michigan State Police post annually to verify their address. The yearly reporting period runs from Jan. 1-15. Some offenders are required to report twice a year or quarterly, and all must report a change of name, address, employment, campus enrollment, internet identifiers and vehicle within three business days.

Although there may be restrictions placed on an offender who is on parole or probation, those are lifted when the probationary period ends, said Kalamazoo County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Carrie Klein.

"The restrictions go away, and a sex offender can do anything allowed under the Sex Offender Act," Klein said. That law, she said, bars former sex offenders from living or loitering within 1,000 feet of a "student safety zone" â schools or day care centers â but there is generally "no restriction on running a gym or a dance studio or a martial arts dojo."

Keith's sex-offender status, according to the Florida Department of Corrections website, shows that as of November 2002 he was "no longer under any form of confinement, supervision or any other court imposed sanction."

Screening for sex offenders

Some professions that require a license to operate may not grant them to registered sex offenders, Klein said, while youth-centered organizations such as Boy Scouts or soccer clubs often have their own policies for screening volunteers. But it falls largely to parents to screen adults who may be in contact with their children, she said.

"Thatâs the reason the sex offender registry exists, so the public can search themselves," the assistant prosecutor said of the state website. The Michigan Public Sex Offender Registry allows people to input in a zip code to find all registered sex offenders who live within that zip code, or to search for an offender by name.

"So if you sign your kids up for soccer, you can run the coaches' names through the sex offender list and see if they are on it," Klein said.

Information on the sites may be limited, however, and difficult to decipher. In Keith's case, the Michigan registery notes three Florida convictions in 1997, with a general description of his crimes there, but makes no mention of parole or probation.

The Florida Department of Corrections website shows nine charges filed against Keith, from 1993 to 1995, and that he was incarcerated from 1997 to 2001, but notes "the offense descriptions are truncated and do not necessarily reflect the crime of conviction."

In requesting the arrest warrant here, Kalamazoo Township Police Detective Mike Szekely told a judge Keith served more than five years in a Florida prison for sodomizing two of his karate students after being charged with 59 counts of sexual assault by prosecutors in Broward County.



Also, while information on sex offender registries is public and may be shared with others, to access information on the Michigan website users must agree to terms of use that include:

Klein said, too, that using the sex offender registry as a predictor of which adults might pose a threat to children is not enough. "We have seen cases where individuals come from all ages and professions who have committed sex offenses," she said.

Advice to parents

The best approach for parents, she suggests, is to teach children early in life the differences between "good touches and bad touches, and keep that line of communication open with children so a child is comfortable talking right away if something happens."

That kind of conversation with your child is not the easiest to have, but one of the most important, she said.

"Teach them as you teach them to cross the street properly, or to ride a bike safely, or get them swimming lessons -- it is just another thing a parent needs to do to keep children safe," Klein said.

Still, as much as parents might try, "we see plenty of cases where kids just donât tell anyone for a long period of time," she said.

Even if weeks, months, or years have elapsed before a child discloses sexual abuse, Klein said, it is important to report the allegations to law enforcement. "Most counties have a specific protocol in place" to minimize the impact of reporting on the child, she said, and also to avoid jeopardizing the investigation or trampling on the rights of the accused.

Whether prosecution results varies from case to case depending on the age of the child when the alleged offense occurred, the relationship of the accused to the child and the severity of the offense, among other variables, according to Klein.

"Ultimately, one of most important things parents can do is to protect their protect child, so any time a child is entering entering a new situation, part of what a parent does is to check it out a little bit," she said.