A Texas newspaper is apologizing - halfheartedly - after its Maxim-style list of female sex offenders generated some harsh feedback.
To create the list, Houston Press blog editor Richard Connelly combed through the Texas Department of Public Safety 's sex-offender list and selected the 10 women he thought were "hottest."
The list includes women whose crimes were anything but attractive, like Rebecca Vlasek , a former junior high school coach who pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault from a relationship with a 14 year old student. Or Esther Walty , who was convicted of committing "indecency" with a 4-year-old.
In an interview with the Daily News, Connelly said he just wanted to shake up people's images of sex offenders -- and help parents protect their children.
His interest in the issue was piqued, he said, after he interviewed two veteran child porn 
"We spent some time trying to talk about the different kind of people who did this," he said. "And part of what they wanted to get across or mention was that ... you can't stereotype them, so that just got stuck in my head."
That interview, he said, made him want to highlight that offenders don't always appear to be monsters.
"That's why I made the conscious decision to include the victims' ages: To show that 'normal-looking' people, people you could pass any day on the street -- or who you might think are 'hot' -- are capable of monstrous things," he wrote in an apology posted on the website. "Glamorizing or trivializing child rape? It did not cross my mind that I was doing that. It should have, it now seems clear."
The apology didn't seem to do much for many readers, who expressed their outrage in the comments section.
"I read the Houston Press all the time and will continue to do so. I am not thin-skinned and I am not a reactionary. I must say this 'story' crosses the line. ... This is classless. What is next. 10 most handsome rapists?" one wrote.
"This is completely horrible. I'm with the OSD comment what is next the most handsome rapists. The Houston Press has sunk to a whole new low," another added.
Connelly, who has been at the Press for 15 years, said that he understood why people were so upset -- and didn't blame them for expressing their outrage.
"It was probably a little too much in trying to be over the top and shake people up a bit," he said. "I guess I could have made it clearer in the introduction in the original item, but I think what really got people was the ages of some of the victims."
Connelly said he put the young ages in on purpose so that readers didn't assume these were teachers having relationships with 17-year-olds.
"But the idea was that these people are out there and you may not recognize them and they may not be a stranger in a car offering a lollipop," he said.
And that was a point some readers seemed to understand.
"This is a GOOD story. It gets people to actually READ the article, read about the women and the crimes they have committed. Women sex offenders ARE out there and are all to often not given much thought or looked upon with leaner eyes ... Yes, seeing that a 2-year-old was sexually molested made me sick to my stomach but being reminded it can happen was an eye-opener," one commenter posted.
nmandell@nydailynews.com
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