A federal lawsuit in Nevada is challenging laws allowing states to post sex offender registries on the Internet, but a Sedgwick County prosecutor said an online database recently helped a  woman here identify a man who’d been peeping through her bathroom window.

Prosecutor Justin Edwards told a judge that the woman gave a detailed description of the bicycle and the man. After police left, she decided on her own to search the Sedgwick County sheriffs’ sex offender registry near her address. She got a hit on Brent Chambers, who lived just a couple of blocks from her in south Wichita.

Police visited Chambers’ house and found that the 23-year-old fit the woman’s description. They also found the bike she described. Last Friday, Judge Anthony Powell revoked Chambers’ probation on a 2007 misdemeanor drug possession conviction and ordered him to serve a year in the county jail. The District Attorney’s office said Chambers had been on the registry for a “sexually motivated burglary” conviction from Butler County.