A state law aimed at stopping convicted pedophiles from living near schools is a complete failure.

We can prove it.

KIRO Team 7 Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne used high-tech computers to locate more than 900 known child rapists and molesters living inside "school protection zones."

A convicted child molester lives on a corner in Tacoma, while a school playground is right across the street.

How close is too close?

Last June, state lawmakers thought they answered that question: convicted pedophiles must live at least 880 feet away from a school.

KIRO Team 7 Investigators wanted to get to the bottom of why that safety zone is not being enforced.

Children playing, walking to school, getting on the bus -- that's the front-picture-window view for convicted child molesters Sedrick Willis and Michael Robert Slack, along with level 3 sex offender and child rapist Michael Pina.

Video: Sex Offenders Discovered Living Too Close To Schools

These convicted pedophiles all live right next to schools, but are just a tiny sample of the 966 we found scattered in nearly every community in the state.

Not too comforting a thought for parents we talked with after school.

“It makes me very concerned. I don't like to hear about things like that. There are laws and they should stay back where they are suppose to be.”

“Oh Geez!.”

“It's disturbing. They have to have a right to live someplace, but I don't know so close to a school or a daycare.”

Using computer mapping software, KIRO Team 7 Investigators plotted addresses of every school and every registered sex offender convicted of violating a child.

The computer drew a circle around schools at 880 feet, then counted the number of convicted pedophiles living inside that circle.

That result stunned State Senator Marilyn Rasmussen, who helped sponsor the permanent school-safety-barrier law that took effect last summer.

“This is an atrocity," she said. "This is criminal. Is that child protected that goes to school. That's the issue. I look at this list and I'm not only shocked, but I'm disgusted.”

The real story behind the new law is that it's nearly impossible to enforce and full of loopholes.

For example, lawmakers slipped in a clause that says if a convicted molester raped their young victim before September, 2001, they can keep living next to schools.

Even under that restriction, we located at least 100 convicted pedophiles, like Jin Yong Kim, living near schools.

Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne caught up with Kim.

Halsne: “Mr. Kim."
Kim: “Yes."
Halsne: “Chris Halsne, KIRO-TV. Can we talk to you a second? You know there is a school right up here?”
Kim: “Yeah”

Court records show Kim raped his girlfriend's 13-year-old daughter multiple times, through April 2003. That's after September 2001. He's already out of prison, living right next door to Mark Twain Elementary School in Federal Way.

He was a little camera shy, but defended his living location, saying the Washington Department of Corrections approved it.

Halsne: “DOC knows you're living here?”
Kim: “Of course. They've been here a couple times.”
Halsne: “They know you live here? They know about your crime?”
Kim: “Yes.”
Halsne: “They know you're a registered sex offender and they know when it occurred? And DOC said you could still live here?”

DOC says it still allows child sex offenders to live within 880 feet of a school unless a judge specifically bans it. That might explain how multiple convicted child rapists continue to get placed at a run-down house just a block-and-a-half from McKinley Middle School in Tacoma.

State Senator and another co-sponsor of the new law, Debbie Regala, isn't bothered by that close proximity.

Halsne: “So you personally don't have a terrific concern that they live near schools?”
Senator Regala: “No. I don't.”
Halsne: “As long as they're registered?”
Senator Regala: “No, I personally do not.”

Pierce County prosecutor Gerald Horne doesn't agree at all. He says unless the state figures out a way to "enforce" the new law, both children and tax payers are great risk.

“If one of those offenders takes a fixation on one of those children and acts out on that fixation, when they're in violation of the law? The potential for liability is enormous and should be.”

And there is not a more dangerous scenario for that than here at Northwest School in Seattle. Nineteen child sex offenders registered to live within a couple of blocks.

“We need to be very, very concerned,” says Acting Principal Alan Brown. He would love to see the new 880 foot rule start working and reduce that number to nothing.

“I can say safely that if this law is not being done right, that we want to participate with officials so that this law does what it aims to do. “

If you expect the Attorney General's Office to enforce this new law, forget it. That agency tells me it doesn't have the authority.

DOC says the law is written so narrowly, it literally has not affected a single sex offender coming out of prison.

A number of politicians in Olympia tell me that was not the intent of the new law and they're going to have to fix it soon.