Virtual meeting on violent sex offender sends the wrong message | The Ginger Journalist

Published 4:15 pm Wednesday, July 22, 2026

Editor’s note: The Courier-Herald contacted the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services about its potential participation in the upcoming meeting; they were invited by the KSCO to attend the upcoming meeting. However, DSHS will not be participating in the meeting as Robert Lough is no longer under DSHS care and custody. Additionally, a community watch party for the virtual meeting will be held at the Enumclaw High School commons, with doors opening at 6:30 p.m.

The King County Sheriff’s Office has declined to host an in-person meeting about Robert Lough, the recently-released resident of McNeil Island who moved into Enumclaw.

Instead, the meeting is virtual, and will be held this Thursday, 7 to 8:30 p.m., at https://bit.ly/3TaMs9i.

The community’s safety concerns with Lough and its questions of transparency and accountability from the county and the state are urgent and must be answered.

“An online meeting is the fastest and most appropriate way to get information out to the community. Our meeting facilitators can better moderate an online forum, where they can address as many questions as possible and ensure the information is conveyed accurately,” the KCSO, which has no power or say over Lough’s release, said in a statement. “A virtual meeting also ensures we communicate with as many residents as possible without capacity constraints.”

I agree with the sheriff’s office that speed is an important factor in disseminating correct information.

But a virtual meeting is not the venue for such an important topic, especially considering the city’s recent history with another violent sexual predator that was relocated to (and eventually, moved away from) Enumclaw in 2023.

In response to the community outrage three years ago, the King County Sheriff’s Office, the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, and the state Department of Corrections hosted a public meeting to address their concerns.

It was a complete and unmitigated disaster on multiple fronts. Officials assumed Enumclaw residents would sit quiet for the better part of an hour listening to experts talk with a slide presentation; instead, citizens took control of the meeting half an hour in to ask questions, and the presentation was tossed aside.

The meeting went completely off the rails when a representative from the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center accidently implied it’s the community’s responsibility, not the government’s, to keep their children safe when the sexual predator in question was now living about 500 feet away from a school bus stop.

I would be shocked if there was anyone who left that meeting less livid than they came, or had more trust in their government systems.

It is extremely disappointing that the King County Sheriff’s Office has appeared to not learn from this past mistake.

When it comes to community safety, and especially the safety of its children, these sorts of meetings demand live interaction and requires officials to take a step back and allow communities like Enumclaw to air their grievances and ask questions — not to tell residents to sit down, be quiet, you can ask your questions at the end.

Would it make a difference if the sheriff’s office had such a meeting? It depends on how you measure success.

You can’t measure success by how many people leave the meeting less angry than they come; Enumclaw residents will leave frustrated that there’s little the county and state can do unless laws are changed.

Instead, the most important metric of success here is how the community will feel during and after the meeting.

If the KCSO wants to host a successful community meeting, residents must feel listened to. They must feel validated.

Best of all would be for them to feel that there are people on the inside who are working to change the system so that something like this cannot happen again.

I wouldn’t hold my breath here: its been shown several times now that the state government is unwilling to make even basic changes to how communities are informed that high-level sex offenders, especially those from McNeil Island, are planning to or have moved into their area, let alone tackle the monster that is violent sexual predator reform and release and all its constitutional implications.

But I think the two former goals are obtainable, if officials are willing to consider what meeting structure could best lead to those outcomes.

I understand the sheriff’s office’s focus on expediency. Trying to accurately inform the community of the facts quickly is normally laudable.

But the Enumclaw community must feel respected before it can be expected to listen. A virtual meeting only tells the community that it’s not worth our government’s time and energy.

I urge the King County Sheriff’s Office to reverse course and schedule an in-person meeting as soon as possible.