MA- 'No clean slate'

That's the message sex offenders get when trying to find work after prison

4-1-2008 Massachusetts:

His convictions for indecent assault and rape of a child date back almost a decade.

Yet they come back to haunt Richard St. Gelais Jr. every time he fills out a job application.

"They say they'll call me back and then they don't bother," the 30-year-old Westford resident said. "No one really hires anyone like me, you know?"

The difficulties that sex offenders face when looking for employment are nothing new. But the debate about whether those obstacles are justified was fired up again this month, when Scott Gagnon was axed from his job at a Tewksbury McDonald's.

The 49-year-old said he was hired even though he indicated on his application that he is a Level 3 sex offender, only to be fired when complaints started pouring in.

"I think that was a rotten thing that they did to him," said a Lowell sex offender who asked to remain anonymous. "You have to give people a break somewhere or else they're going to go back to prison. If you ain't got a job, if you ain't got a place to live, what are you going to do? It's rough out there with the way they crucify you."

But that kind of argument does not sit well with Wendy Murphy, a New England School of Law professor and nationally known victim-rights advocate.

"Am I suggesting that once you are a sex offender, you have to be rendered homeless and not able to get a job? No," she said. "But I am very comfortable saying that you may have to work in coal mines for the rest of your life. That's what happens when you do really bad things to people. There's no such thing as a clean slate."
Murphy is currently representing the family of Alexandra Zapp, a woman who was murdered by a sex offender in a Burger King bathroom five years ago, in civil litigation. She argued that businesses should be held liable for their choice to hire a sex offender.

"They have to recognize the fact that when they invite the public into their facility, they have some responsibility," she said. "A person who has a history of stealing shouldn't be hired at a bank. Similarly, sex offenders should not be hired for a job where they would have access to defenseless children."

By the same token, Murphy noted, businesses should not hesitate to turn down sex offenders if they feel the job is inappropriate.

"It's absolutely reasonable for an owner to say, 'Thank you, but no thank you,'" she said. "It's not discrimination against convicted criminals. It's common sense."

Timothy App, who has worked with sex offenders for over two decades, agrees that there are some jobs that are simply not appropriate for them. But he said he is frustrated by the rejection that these offenders face across the board in the job market.

"If they are unemployed, they're more of a risk," he noted. "A sex offender can be treated and managed and can be moved to a stage of recovery, just as an alcoholic would be. But if they don't have the support network and things start falling apart, just as the alcoholic would grab a bottle, the sex offender could reoffend."

App, who was the first chairman of the Massachusetts Sex Offender Registry Board and worked in the state's Department of Corrections for 30 years, said the resistance that sex offenders routinely face from employers is often rooted in senseless and deep-rooted fear.

"We, as the public, like to think that these guys jump from behind bushes," he said. "But the facts are that 80 percent of victims know their perpetrators and 70 percent of sexual assaults occur in the victim's house, the perpetrator's house or someone else's house. Some people also think that sex offenders can't be rehabilitated, but that's wrong."

The Counseling and Psychotherapy Center, a Needham-based agency for which App is the director of operations, offers management and treatment programs to about 2,000 sex offenders across the country.

The recidivism rate among the center's patients is just 1.6 percent, App noted.

"Yes, we need to be careful with this population," he said. "They need to be under a supervision system that can be ratcheted up and down. When sex offenders are managed and treated properly, they can even become an important part of a community. The problem is that most of them are not supervised unless they're on parole or probation."

Some states have tried to address that shortcoming, App said. Maine, for instance, has its released offenders supervised by sex-offender specific probation or parole officers and treatment providers. They also undergo regular polygraph tests.

"In Massachusetts, most offenders are supervised by parole and probation officers, and they receive some treatment," App said. "Of course, I would like to see smaller case loads and sex-offender specific probation officers. But it's all a money issue."

Murphy said she also believes that sentencing guidelines are often too lenient when it comes to sex offenders.

"The debt has often not been paid, not in any sense of the word justice," she said. "So I think that when you hurt someone, people have the right to judge you harshly. If you want a level of social respect, you have to earn it."

A good start would be to go after the right kind of job, Chelmsford resident Laurie Myers said.

"They need to realize that part of assimilating into a community is taking responsibility for their crime," said Myers, who founded the advocacy group Community VOICES. "People will be worried and skeptical -- and rightfully so. So they have to be smarter about where they're looking for work."

Andrea Quinn of Tewksbury, who led the charge against Gagnon working at a McDonald's in her hometown, agrees.

"Don't settle for the McDonald's, the Wal-Mart or the Walgreens, where kids will be roaming around," Quinn said. "There are warehouses, lumber yards, cemeteries, auto-body shops -- places where there are no urge (triggers)."

St. Gelais said he made a concerted effort to stay away from the "obvious" places -- supermarkets and fast-food restaurants -- when he applied for a dozen different jobs over the last three months. But he still has had no luck.

"As soon as I get my (construction) license, hopefully everything will work out a lot better," he said.

Lowell resident Randy Bouatick, who was convicted of rape and abuse of a child, said he, too, has been unable to find a job since being released from jail in 2006. The 27-year-old former security guard maintains that he was wrongly accused and hopes to eventually have the charge expunged.

"I have some friends who ... told me that they don't care about my charge," Bouatick, who is legally deaf, wrote during a recent interview. "They said, ''Forget about the past.' But it's very tough." ..more.. by Rob Mills and Jack Minch contributed to this report.