Gaylene Chun, who was molested by a trusted neighbor when she was 12 and now has three children of her own with another on the way, said the Web site gives important information to parents.

"I would not want anyone to go through the physical and emotional torment that I went through," Chun said. "Although I have been healed of the pain through our one and only Jesus Christ, it is an event that will stick with me for life."

Chun, who had urged the Legislature to expand the Web site, spoke at a news conference with Lingle, Attorney General Mark Bennett and other law-enforcement officials.

The new law removes a requirement that sex offenders are entitled to a court hearing before their information is posted on the Internet. A previous state Web site was shut down after the state Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that it violated due process rights. Voters approved a constitutional amendment in November that gave the state Legislature authority to set conditions for the broader public release of the information.

Even before the vote, the state had started to rebuild a Web site as prosecutors went through the courts to make sex-offender information public. But before yesterday, only 74 of the state's more than 2,150 registered sex offenders were on the Internet.

Bennett announced that information on more than 1,400 sex offenders is now on the Web site, while information on 300 other sex offenders would be accessible through the Hawai'i Criminal Justice Data Center or at police stations. His office was still reviewing the background of the remaining sex offenders. Some misdemeanor offenders will not have their information released publicly.

The law allows sex offenders to petition the courts to have their information removed from public view after 10 to 40 years, depending on the severity of their crimes.

"Hawai'i today is a safer place than it was yesterday," Bennett said.

The impact of the new law was immediate. At Circuit Court downtown, a hearing on whether a 56-year-old man should be placed on the registry for sexually assaulting two young girls was canceled less than an hour after Lingle signed the law. The man will now automatically be placed on the registry.

Outrage over several sex crimes during the past few months gave lawmakers new reminders about why people might want information about their neighbors.

Lingle said it also was people like Chun, who were willing to talk with the Legislature about their own painful experiences, who were persuasive. She said the government is often asked to balance the rights of criminals with the rights of victims.

"If I have to decide which way to lean, we're going to always lean in support of the victims of crimes," Lingle said.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Hawai'i, and even some lawmakers who worked on the bill, cautioned against overstating the value of the law.

Requiring sex offenders to register with police, as Hawai'i does, allows authorities to track sex offenders and may serve as a deterrent against future crimes. But a task force that studied sex-offender laws nationally for the Legislature found no evidence that public access to information about sex offenders reduces recidivism.

Lois K. Perrin, legal director for the ACLU, said posting the information on the Internet may make it tougher for sex offenders to find housing or jobs.

"It's unfortunate that Hawai'i has enacted such a callous bill," Perrin said. "There is no evidence to show that these kinds of public access laws increase public safety one bit."

Although sex crimes are often unreported and recidivism is difficult to monitor, Canadian researchers who examined 61 separate studies estimated the average recidivism rate for sex crimes at 13.4 percent over four to five years.

The state Department of Public Safety put the recidivism rate for the worst sex offenders — sex felons who were released from Hawai'i prisons and were convicted of new felony sex crimes — at 2.9 percent since 1988. The attorney general's office estimates the recidivism rate for all of Hawai'i's registered sex offenders at 16 percent.

State Rep. Blake Oshiro, D-33rd (Halawa, 'Aiea, Pearlridge), the vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the public seems very interested in getting information about sex offenders, and he believes the Web site will be a good tool for parents. But he said treatment is probably the best way to reduce the chances that sex offenders will commit new crimes.

"The only thing that really reduces recidivism is treatment," Oshiro said.