New effort to capture 500 unregistered sex offenders in the U.S.

LEON DICKSON raped a 12-year-old girl on her way to school.

Jerry Barker assaulted a woman with Down syndrome.

And Malik Torian molested a 5-year-old boy.

The three convicted sex offenders served time behind bars. After their release from prison, they were required to report their whereabouts to state police at least once a year under Megan's Law - for the rest of their lives.

They failed to do so.

Now, the U.S. Marshals Service is aggressively seeking the fugitives under Operation Guardian, a national effort to capture the 500 most-dangerous unregistered sex offenders in the country.

"It's just a little scary," Dickson's victim said when told recently that the man who raped her 16 years ago is out there somewhere. "I hope he doesn't try to locate me. I hope they would definitely try to find him."

Under Operation Guardian, authorities recently caught a fourth Philadelphia man, John Lyles, 47. Lyles was HIV positive when he indecently assaulted an 8-year-old girl around Christmas 1999.

"These are some of the most dangerous people on the planet," said John Patrignani, acting U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. "They're predators" who attack those who can't fight, mainly women and children, he said.

Lt. Stephen Biello of the Philadelphia police Special Victims Unit said about 30 freed sex offenders are unregistered in Philadelphia. The number varies and it's a "very fluid list," he said.

The U.S. Marshals Service is working with city and state police to find Dickson, Barker and Torian - considered among the most dangerous offenders in the nation.

They want the public's help.

If you have information about their whereabouts, contact the Marshals Service at 866-865-TIPS (8477). There is a $1,000 reward for information leading to each man's capture.

On the morning of March 8, 1994, "Sheila," a 12-year-old girl, was walking to school in North Philadelphia. At Marston and Cumberland streets, two men approached her, including Dickson, whom Sheila had seen around the neighborhood.

She had never spoken to him and thought he lived in the area or hung out there dealing drugs. Dickson and the other man followed Sheila, not her real name, and pulled her toward another street, then pushed her into a house.

"Maybe someone's mom's house," Sheila, now 29, said in a recent interview. She saw an unleashed "pit bull or Rottweiler, one of those kind of big dogs" in the family room. "That added to the terror of the whole thing."

A third man, "a really fat, bigger guy," entered the house, acting like a guard in case she tried to run, she said.

Then, Dickson forced Sheila into the basement and raped her. She remembered fighting but also recalled how surreal it all was, "like a movie," she said.

Dickson "pushed her onto the bed in the basement and while he held her hands above her head, he pulled her underwear and pants down," a prosecutor said at Dickson's guilty-plea hearing.

After raping the girl, Dickson ordered her to leave. Sheila ran to school and told authorities, who contacted police.

Dickson, now 36, who appears in some official records as Leon Dixon, pleaded guilty to the rape and served 10 years behind bars. He got out in 2004.

His last contact with police was in 2005. Authorities have addresses for him on Chelwynde Avenue near 65th Street in Southwest Philly and on 56th Street near Media in West Philly.

Residents on Chelwynde Avenue, a block bustling with young kids one recent afternoon, said they didn't recognize him. Neighbors on 56th Street also said they didn't know him.

A relative of Dickson's in Strawberry Mansion told a Daily News reporter he didn't know where Dickson is. "I don't deal with him," the relative said. "I don't even stay in contact with him."

Dickson's victim said she never saw him after that terrifying day. And she hopes she never has to.

"I think I still have trust issues," she said. "I just always want to control my situations now."

The woman with Down syndrome had a difficult time telling a judge what happened to her.

"He touched me in my butt," said "Andrea" at a preliminary hearing in May 2001, referring to defendant Jerry Barker, whom she called Dino.

As the prosecutor tried to get Andrea, then 28, to be specific, she responded with vague, sometimes nonresponsive, answers: "In the front." "Touched me." "He touched my butt."

Andrea, not her real name, said the assaults occurred in various parts of a North Philly house. The prosecutor contended Barker sexually assaulted the woman repeatedly until April 1, 2001. She didn't say when the assaults began.

A sister of Andrea's who also testified at the hearing was more blunt. She said she saw Andrea that April day "walking like, like her butt was sore."

The woman testified that her sister had told her that Dino had "put his ding dong in her butt."

According to court documents, Barker, now 53, pleaded no contest to involuntary deviate sexual intercourse. He received one to two years in prison, followed by 13 years' probation. He was released from state prison Nov. 20, 2003.

His last-known address, according to Philadelphia police records, was on 15th Street near Clearfield in North Philadelphia.

One recent evening, in the rough-and-tumble, litter-strewn neighborhood - where two cops in a patrol car urged this reporter not to walk around alone - a woman said she believed she saw Barker twice visiting the neighborhood in the past year.

She didn't know Barker by name but recognized his face when shown a photo.

The guys who work at Bojack Boy's Construction are friendly with him, she said. The older men who hang out at a house on Clearfield near the beer store know him. Or, she said, he would probably hang out in the park on Clearfield.

Most people in this neighborhood won't speak about him, she said as she held her baby girl. "Most guys around here have been locked up, so being a sex offender is like nothing," she said.

Some men hanging out next to the beer store recognized his picture. "I knew him as Dino," exclaimed one man when shown Barker's photo.

Meanwhile, a sister of Barker's victim, when told by the Daily News that Barker hasn't registered with police, said she hoped authorities would catch him.

"He is just a mean person, just mean and cruel," she said in an interview in her home.

"It tore me apart, it tore me apart," she said about the day she found out about the assaults.

This offense wasn't Barker's only sex case.

In October 1981, when he was 24, Barker had sex with a 9-year-old girl. The girl developed gonorrhea, according to court records.

Barker was sentenced to five years' probation, but in 1985, at a violation-of-probation hearing, a judge revoked his probation and sentenced him to one to five years behind bars. Court records did not indicate the violation.

And on Sept. 8, 2000, he kissed a girl, then 13, and groped her twice. He was sentenced to six months to a year in prison, followed by one year of probation.

Court records show that he was also arrested in 2007 on charges of unlawful contact with a minor and related offenses. The case was dismissed for lack of prosecution in February 2008, but four months later, authorities refiled the charges. But after Barker failed to show up in court, a bench warrant was issued for him.

In 2000, Torian stuck his finger up a 5-year-old boy's butt in a Mill Creek home. When the boy was 12, he told police, describing the incident as "nasty." Torian pleaded guilty to aggravated indecent assault in September 2008 and was sentenced to 11 1/2 to 23 months in prison, followed by eight years' probation.

Torian, now 27, was to reside at his mother's house on Edgeley Street near 22nd in North Philadelphia after his release.

But he's not there.

He last gave his address to police in February 2009 as being on Akron Street near Dyre in Frankford. No one was home at the house when a reporter recently visited. Public records indicate that a relative of his may have lived at that house. But next-door neighbors said they didn't recognize Torian's photo and didn't recognize his last name.

"I've never seen him," said Kevin Adams, one neighbor. He said if Torian were to live next door, it would make him "very" uncomfortable since he has five young children at home.

Torian's family still lives on Edgeley Street.

A brother, 23, said one recent evening outside the home: "I never talked to him. He hasn't contacted us."

He said a SWAT team had come looking for his brother at 6 one morning in March or April.

"They just kept banging on the door, [saying] 'Malik, come out! Malik come out!' " the brother recalled. "I said [through a window], 'He don't live here.' They showed my dad a warrant real quick and pushed him on the couch. They just came in yelling, ordering everyone to come downstairs."

Torian's mother, Irissa Torian, said as she stood outside her home, her lips pursed, as children played around her and her neighbors' homes: "I don't know where he's at. I don't know nothing about him."

Know where they are?

If you have information on the whereabouts of Leon Dickson, Jerry Barker or Malik Torian, contact the U.S. Marshals Service at: 866-865-TIPS (8477). A $1,000 reward is offered for information that leads to each man's capture.

To see Philadelphia's fugitive sex offenders, visit: www.phillypolice.com/news. (Scroll down and click on the Megan's Law Fugitives link.)

To learn more about Pennsylvania's Megan's Law, visit: www.pameganslaw.state.pa.us.