MARIETTA — Homeless, registered sex offenders living in tents behind a Cobb office park have three days to find new homes after being told Monday to leave the wooded area that their probation officers, they say, told them to live.

Unlike other offenders, the eight homeless people living on muddy terrain behind 1257 Kennestone Circle do not have the money to get a residence in a compliant area — one that is not, according to state law, within 1,000 feet of a church, school, park or other area where children gather. Therefore, as a last resort, they say they were told to live on the land, which the Georgia Department of Transportation owns.

There’s not one efficiency apartment or hotel that is in compliance, several men told the Journal.

“The way we’re living, it feels like we’re animals,” said, Marque Miechurski, 30, who was convicted of child molestation in October 2008, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

He said he was living with his wife, who moved into a house that is not in compliance. So he left, heard about the camp, and registered it as his new address.

“They’re telling them now, if you don’t have a place, this is where you should go,” he said.

Two other men at the camp, speaking on conditions of anonymity, told the Journal that their Marietta probation officers instructed them there.

Although late calls to Marietta Chief Probation Officer Pam Ritpweger went unreturned as of press time Monday, Ahmed Holt, manager of the state’s sex offender administration unit, told the Associated Press that probation officers direct offenders to the camp if other options fail.

There are 375 registered sex offenders in Cobb, of which, 13 are registered as homeless, said Cobb County Sheriff Neil Warren.

On the GBI’s sex offender registry, the men living at the camps are listed as homeless at the 1257 Kennestone Circle address or similar addresses belonging to other businesses in the office complex.

Several of the sex offenders said they did a double take when their probation officers told them about the outpost in the woods behind the businesses, in between them and the state DOT building.

“Even the probation officer, he looked at me and said there’s nothing he can do,” said Levertice Johnson, a 52-year-old who moved to the woods after he couldn’t find a job and couldn’t afford $60 a week for rent at an Atlanta shelter. “He knows it’s wrong.”

Still, the offenders were making due with their plights. They would wave when seeing GDOT employees and obtain water after hours from nearby businesses. They would get lunch at MUST Ministries, which is across Cobb Parkway from the camp, and shower there twice a week. Cobb authorities would come by and do compliance checks at the camp, Warren said.

That was until Monday afternoon, however, when a state DOT employee and a sheriff’s deputy came to the camp and told them they have 24 hours to vacate the land or they would be charged with criminal trespassing.

The camp residents said they have 72 hours from this afternoon to register a new place to call home.

“I’ll have to call my probation officer in the morning and ask them where to go,” Miechurski said. “They could tell us another spot, then this could happen again. Generally, they give us 72 hours to register. So we find a place or we go back to jail.”

Another man at the camp said he too will now pack up and look for a compliant address.

“The sheriff’s office can tell you what’s not compliant, but can’t tell you what is,” he said.

Cindy Baker, who is not an offender, but is living at the camp and trying to help Miechurski, said some of the male offenders have been living in the camp for almost a year.

Miechurski blames the media’s inquiries in to the situation as the reason GDOT took action Monday.

“Now they have no other choice,” he said.

Baker, Miechurski and others at the camp think the laws are too strict in Georgia.

“I can go to church, but can’t live by one?” Miechurski said.

Another man said, “Two sex offenders cannot live together if they wanted to be roommates, but we can live on this land together?”

Miechurski added, regarding Georgia’s laws, “It’s feel-good legislation. It looks good on paper, but screws with people.”

Critics say camps such as Cobb’s are an example of how laws designed to keep Georgia’s children out of harm’s way create a hazard where penniless sex offenders live largely unsupervised at the government’s urging.

“The state needs to find a responsible way to deal with this problem,” said Sarah Geraghty, an attorney with the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights who represents a man living in the camp. “Requiring people to live like animals in the woods is both inhumane and a terrible idea for public safety.”

Sheriff Warren said the land where the camp is located is in compliance with state law. However, “It seems to me, before I would turn someone on the street, you would want to know where they are going to live and verify that.”

Warren said, since the camp is on state land, he had no control over the homeless offenders living there.

“I cannot tell them where they can stay. I can tell them where they can’t — if they are within 1,000 feet of a common space for children.”

But when GDOT asked for the sheriff’s office’s assistance in removing the men Monday, then Warren has the authority to kick them out, he said.

— The Associated Press contributed to this report