NBC Chicago’s Bennett Haeberle takes a look into how Chicagoans who have been arrested for sex crimes stay off the sex offender registry after being convicted.
When John heard the news on a recent Friday, it hit him hard: Elliott Nott, a former Chicago public schoolteacher and John’s former colleague, had been arrested and charged with three counts of child exploitation, after allegedly exposing himself to three girls – ages 10, 9, and 7.
Eight years ago, John – who does not want to be identified by his real name – was one of more than two dozen victims recorded by Nott after he hid a motion-activated camera in an employee bathroom at Ogden Elementary School on Chicago’s Near North Side, according to a Chicago Police Department incident report.
Police said the camera was pointed at the toilet, and – over several days – caught several employees and a disabled student using the bathroom.
“I felt violated,” John said. “I know my colleagues felt violated. It was extremely disturbing for many of us, and very hard to get over. I personally had to seek therapy for it and had a very difficult time using the public bathrooms – and I would hyperventilate even thinking about it.”
Nott was eventually convicted of 26 counts of unauthorized videorecording. A single count of child pornography – involving the child who was videotaped -- was dismissed because the parents reportedly did not want their child to have to testify in court. And because it was, Nott was not made to register as a sex offender, because – while child pornography is considered a sex offense -- unauthorized videorecording is not.
“I did not feel like what it was being labelled as, was 'illegal videotaping,’” John said. “It’s a sexual act. You don’t have to touch someone for a sexual act. You are doing something sexually – you are videotaping…. and by watching it, he [Nott] gets some kind of sexual pleasure out of that.”
As it turns out, Illinois law also does not consider several crimes, involving voyeurism, to be sex crimes. For example, when Nott was arrested at Ogden School in 2016, NBC 5 Investigates found he’d been convicted of a “Peeping Tom” offense in his hometown of Normal when he was 18 years old and caught spying on two sisters in his neighborhood. But a “Peeping Tom” conviction does not require someone to register as a sex offender.
Local
NBC 5 Investigates also found that Nott had been issued a notice of violation of an ordinance against prowling and loitering in a Connecticut town where he lived, taught, and coached track in his late 20s.
He’d been caught there, spying on a woman through the bathroom window of her home, according the court case obtained by NBC 5 Investigates. That was not considered a sex crime either.
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So – to this day – Nott has never been regarded as a sex offender, in the eyes of the law.
However, NBC 5 Investigates found an order in Nott’s criminal case file, in the Ogden School case, that indicates that the judge in that case may have thought otherwise.
That judge gave Nott only two years’ probation, total, for all 26 convictions, with no jail time. But the judge also issued an order – as a strict condition of probation – that Nott was required to undergo therapy specifically designed for sex offenders. In essence, Nott was being treated as if he were a sex offender, without having to register publicly as a sex offender.
Nott's case is not unique. In our examination of thousands of sex crime arrests in Chicago over the past six years, we found 97 other cases where an alleged sexual offender pled down to a non-sex crime; got probation only; yet was still ordered to undergo sex offender training.
These cases are separate from the miniscule number of cases – just 1.5% -- where we found someone who pled guilty to an actual sex crime and was sent to jail. Those people must register as sex offenders. Not so, for these 98 others who – nevertheless – were ordered into therapy FOR sex offenders.
In Elliott Nott’s case, Cook County court files show that he did successfully complete his probation in the Ogden School case – including the mandated sex offender therapy.
Nevertheless, John said he and the other school employees who police said had been caught on video by Nott, were disappointed that they were not able to confront Nott directly in court, and that he did not get jail time.
“When do you not just slap someone on the wrist and put them back in society? When do you say – hey – this person shouldn’t be sitting in society?”
Then, there’s this: NBC 5 Investigates found a civil suit Nott filed against a local therapist who had seen him before his arrest at Ogden School.
Nott claimed in the lawsuit that the therapist violated his privacy rights by calling police when Nott admitted to her that he’d hidden the video camera in the Ogden bathroom.
In the court files, NBC 5 Investigates found a transcript of the notes that the therapist took, quoting Nott during a therapy session before his arrest. According to the therapist’s notes:
“The patient told this writer ‘I put a video camera in the employee bathroom at my work,’ shortly later, [patient] told this writer ‘I work in an elementary school.’ This patient went on to tell his wife and this writer that he had been a voyeur for a long time, ‘since I was 10 or 12. I do things, then don’t for a few years. Then I do something else. I sometimes feel like I won’t get in trouble, then sometimes I feel the potential huge consequences.’ This patient said that he was interviewed at the school for this video camera, that he denied it, and that he still felt like maybe he would not be caught.”
It was after that conversation, according to the complaint, that the therapist called police.
Nott and the therapist eventually settled the civil suit, and Nott continued to live on Chicago’s Northwest Side after completing his probation and therapy in 2021.
“So he’s not on the registry,” John said. “So he’s just kind of out there.”
Until this month. That’s when Chicago police arrested Nott and charged him with exposing himself on two occasions – once to a 10-year-old girl; and once to two girls, ages 7 and 9. He has yet to enter a plea in his court case, but will likely do so at a hearing late this month.
NBC 5 Investigates asked both Nott (who is currently in the Cook County Department of Corrections) and his attorney for comment, and both declined.
“He was able to be walking around in a North Side neighborhood and – with his track record of what he was doing – I just cannot understand,” John said. “Our judicial system already said that he needed sex offender counseling. Why was he able to walk around? Why are other people able to walk around in his similar situation?”
Nott’s next day in court – in this most recent case -- is scheduled for Oct. 30.
