ME- Bucksport sex offender seeks to move back home with his parents; prosecutors object

3-12-2008 Maine:

Travis White wants to move back home to Bucksport. His aging parents need his care. And, his attorney contends, the 37-year-old convicted sex offender could benefit greatly from a familial support system.

Hancock County prosecutors see his situation differently, however, and don’t think White should be allowed to return to a community they say he devastated with his misconduct.

White’s case evokes a question whose answer has been elusive both in Maine and across the country: How should society deal with sex offenders once they are outside prison walls?

"I think we’re starting to get better at addressing these questions, and we’ll continue to get better," said Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, chair of the Legislature’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. "But it’s an ongoing battle, and the fact is, there’s no easy answer."

White, a former baseball and basketball coach in Bucksport, was convicted in 2002 of sexually assaulting young boys during a decade-long stretch dating back to 1991. He was released late last summer after serving six years in prison, including the time he was held in jail before the trial.

He’s on probation now, and one of his conditions is that his probation officer approve all living arrangements. But finding housing has been difficult, according to White’s attorney, Stephen Smith of Bangor, who revealed that his client has even spent significant time in a homeless shelter.

With his options running out, White is turning to perhaps the only people who can see past his criminal conduct: his family.

Smith recently filed a motion in Hancock County Superior Court to amend his client’s probation conditions and allow him to move back into his parents’ Bucksport home.

"I think it’s entirely reasonable for someone who has served time and who is still under strict supervision to be allowed to stay with family," said Smith, who didn’t represent White at his trial but has taken over the case since.

White’s probation officer opposes the request on the basis that his parents’ home would be an unhealthy environment. Hancock County District Attorney Michael Povich agrees and said the man’s relocation would be traumatic for the victims and the Bucksport community at large.

And so, later this month, Travis White will return to the same courtroom where he was sentenced for his crimes years ago.

Once again, a judge will help decide his fate.

A painful trial

Neither White nor his parents agreed to be interviewed for this story. The following account is based on court documents and previously published reports in the Bangor Daily News.

White’s weeklong trial in March 2002 featured extensive media coverage and standing-room-only crowds in the Ellsworth courtroom.

The most pointed testimony came from the four male victims — all under the age of 12 when the misconduct occurred — who recalled in painful detail how their one-time coach took advantage of them.

Each story was the same. He invited them to his basement apartment, they said. He gave them alcohol. When they fell asleep, he made his move. Each victim told jurors that they awoke during the night at White’s apartment to find the man either fondling them or performing oral sex on them.

After five days of testimony, the jury needed only about an hour to find White guilty of multiple counts of gross sexual assault, unlawful sexual contact and endangering the welfare of a child.

It’s important to note that White maintained his innocence throughout the trial and in fact took responsibility for his crimes only at sentencing, about three months after he was found guilty.

"What I did was wrong, hurtful and disgusting," he told the court on June 26, 2002. "I’ll continue to pray for those I’ve hurt and hope someday that they will forgive me."

Justice Thomas E. Delahanty II, who presided over White’s trial, was critical of the man’s sudden remorse at sentencing.

"His denials required those people to come into court to embarrass themselves and humiliate themselves in public," Delahanty said before handing down a sentence of 38 years in prison with all but eight years suspended.

White later filed a motion for a new trial, claiming that his attorney at the time, Donald Brown of Bangor, provided an insufficient defense. That motion was denied, and White spent six years at the Down East Correctional Facility in Machiasport.

He earned time off his sentence for good behavior and was released late last summer with nearly three decades of probation following him like a shadow.

The risks of returning

Now that he’s on the other side of prison walls, White, like most sex offenders, has a close relationship with his probation officer.

He’s in regular counseling. He has a job with an excavation company in Bangor. His attorney says White genuinely wants to rebuild his life. The only problem has been finding a suitable place to live.

White appealed recently to his probation officer, Donald Muth, to explore the option of moving back to Bucksport. Smith said the request has two purposes: to provide his client with a support system and to allow White to help care for his aging parents.

According to court documents, Muth was hesitant and solicited input from Dwayne Hogan, a clinical social worker in Bangor, about White’s request.

In a letter to Muth, Hogan wrote that he didn’t think it was a good idea for White to live with his parents. Hogan alleged that the parents have consistently doubted their son’s culpability in the crimes, and he worried that they would not monitor his behavior.

Mary Kellett, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted White’s case in 2002, agreed with that assessment.

"He wants to live in the same basement apartment where he perpetrated this abuse," she said, even suggesting that White’s parents enabled his conduct.

The district attorney’s office has been in contact with the victims since White’s release, Kellett said, but she declined to speculate about their opinions of the man’s desire to return to Bucksport.

The prosecutor also indicated that while only four victims came forward for trial purposes, she believes others may have been assaulted by White several years ago.

"He’s still a risk, and he’ll always be a risk," Kellett said. "We need to do everything we can to make sure he’s properly supervised and that he doesn’t reoffend."

Smith disputed the fact that his client is a risk. When asked if White is being discriminated against, the attorney said, "Yes, in the sense that all sex offenders have a thumb put on them. And maybe that’s appropriate, but at some point you have to ask, ‘Is it more than necessary?’"

On Tuesday, March 25, inside the Hancock County Superior Court, that’s exactly what Justice Delahanty will be tasked to decide.

Maine’s sex offender laws

White would not be the first sex offender living in Bucksport. According to Maine’s Sex Offender Registry, 15 are listed with Bucksport addresses, a relatively high number for a town of only about 5,000 residents, Sen. Diamond said.

Like every state, Maine has a version of the federal Sexual Offender Act of 1994, also known as Megan’s Law for a Florida girl who was raped and killed by a violent sex offender who lived next door. It requires law enforcement agencies to make information available to the public regarding sex offenders, but it allows states to determine how to disseminate that information.

As of 1999, Maine’s sex offender registry has been maintained by the Maine State Police and the State Bureau of Identification. The public can access the registry online or request information about offenders at local municipal offices.

Communities also are free to institute further restrictions specific to where offenders can live. Some communities, like the southern Maine city of Westbrook, have passed laws so restrictive that they effectively ban sex offenders from living anywhere in town. Diamond said he thinks many of those restrictions could be challenged in court as unreasonable.

Bucksport has not yet instituted any such restrictions.

Maine’s sex offender laws have been under serious debate since the brutal slayings of John Grey of Milo and William Elliot of Corinth in April 2006. A Canadian man, 20-year-old Stephen Marshall, shot and killed both men after finding their names and addresses on the online registry. Marshall later committed suicide as police were trying to apprehend him.

Rep. Joseph Tibbetts, R-Columbia, one of Diamond’s colleagues on the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, said legislators are in the midst of overhauling the sex registry bill.

The changes likely will include instituting classifications for offenders based on the severity of the crimes they have committed, Tibbetts said.

By classifying former offenders by the crimes of the past that ignores, possibly purposefully by lawmakers, the effects of prison, probation, parole and any therapeutic or other programs the former offender may have taken. Accordingly, the system of classification is a farce and misleads the public. Further, by ignoring the rehabilitative effects says, that those systems were in place for show and were never intended to help society in the long run. It is a sad society that simply ignores rehabilitation and the classification system continues to mislead the public as to these former offenders, such protects no one! eAdvocate

Diamond added that housing restrictions might need to be considered as well.

Both legislators said cases like White’s are common but difficult for lawmakers who have to weigh the rights of victims against offenders who are trying to reintegrate into society.

Once the former offender completes what is statutorily prescribed for the crime committed, is there really a diference in the rights of victims and former offenders? According to current law, NO! They are on equal footing in society.eAdvocate

"From a legislative side, what we’re trying to do is get sex offenders back into some form of productive society," he said.

Still, any law changes wouldn’t affect White’s case, since his fate is tied to probation conditions outlined by the court.

No easy answer

Bucksport police Sgt. Sean Geagan, who was the primary investigator in White’s case, said his department will monitor White closely if he’s allowed to move back.

"But I don’t think we can take a position on where he can live," he said. "We are going to continue to keep people safe, whether it’s victims or the perpetrators."

If it is true that former offenders are somehow being protected, how can lawmakers explain the vigilantism and murders former offenders are facing? Lawmakers have zero in place to protect former offfenders or their familes, that issue is simply ignored by lawmakers!eAdvocate

Bucksport Town Manager Roger Raymond also responded diplomatically when asked about White’s situation.

"Our position [as a town] is that we respond to our citizens," he said. "If they came to us and said, ‘Look, this isn’t something we want,’ we would respond. Absent of that, it’s not fair for me or anyone else to pass judgment."

Raymond pointed out that White’s parents live in a house that is away from the center of town. It’s not near a school or any other place where children might congregate.

Although there hasn’t been significant public outcry yet, the town manager conceded that Bucksport is a small community where White could easily run into a victim or victim’s family members.

Rep. Tibbetts agreed that in White’s case the family is the ultimate support network, but he also said he would never question the judgment of a probation officer.

Sen. Diamond said the fact that White has been staying in a homeless shelter is particularly troubling, and he wondered if the state could come up with a compromise.

He offered the suggestion that White wear an ankle monitor, which has become a more common law enforcement tool in other states to track sex offenders.

"The alternative is that he’s going to be on the street where, in my opinion, he’s at more of a risk to reoffend," he said. "New victims are no less important than the existing victims."

No matter how Justice Delahanty rules in White’s case, the issue of what to do with sex offenders who have been released from prison is not going away, Tibbetts said.

"At some point we need to ask, ‘Are we going to maintain them the rest of their life?’" he said. "It makes for a very difficult situation, that’s for sure." ..more.. by Travis White