WY- Sex offender’s case shows gap in system

This is absolute proof that lawmakers DO NOT want to PREVENT sex offenses, they WANT them to happen so they can get credit for capturing those who will commit them.

Lawmakers abuse their powers by enacting laws that FAIL to PREVENT sex offenses, in this case, the offender (like John Couey who murdered Jessica Lundsford) ASKED for help, but there was none because of the failure of lawmakers!

Registration laws began around 1995, 13 years ago, and still no therapy has been approved by lawmakers, but billions of dollars for TRACKING (aftera crime is committed) is approved with regularity! Gaps? This demonstrates the Grand Canyon of failures and it occurs nationally.


6-18-2008 Wyoming:

Wyoming’s lack of programs means man will spend 35 to 50 years in penitentiary after sting.

An arguably mentally handicapped man sentenced to prison for most of the rest of his life because there is no other place for him highlights a gap in Wyoming’s criminal justice system.

Lloyd Christopher Belles, 39, was sentenced Friday to 35 to 50 years in the Wyoming State Penitentiary for one felony count of attempted sexual abuse of a minor.

That’s the longest sentence issued by 9th District Judge Nancy Guthrie in at least the last few years, according to attorneys.

Jackson police arrested Belles in a sting operation on Halloween after he appeared at a motel room with a towel and candy. He was instructed to bring those items to the specified room after an undercover officer, through an acquaintance of Belles’, arranged for Belles to have sex with a fictional minor, according to court records.

Suspect sought help

But before that sting, Belles went to Smokey Rhea and Tommy Wood at the Community Resource Center, which serves as a hub for social services.

“From the very beginning, he was saying, ‘help me, help me,’” Rhea said. “He would tell me, ‘Smokey, I don’t want you to be disappointed in me, but I’m really afraid I’m going to hurt someone.’”

That was in August after Belles was released from the state prison, where he’d spent the last 16 years for two previous convictions for fondling a 6-year-old girl and a having a sexual encounter with a 12-year-old boy.

By September, Wood said he and Rhea and Belles were on a mad hunt for resources. Everywhere they looked, they found locked doors.

There are no resources in Wyoming for sex offenders.

Wood said he found several private rehabilitation programs that would accept Belles if he could pay $40,000 up front or if he had insurance.

They even called the Teton County Attorney’s Office and made an effort to have Belles institutionalized.

He turned himself in to St. John’s Medical Center and said he was a danger to himself and others because of his urges to have sex with young girls and dogs. He was held at St. John’s for 16 days before a bed opened at the state mental hospital in Evanston, Rhea said. They held him there for the required two weeks and then brought him back to Jackson, Rhea said.

He had nowhere to go. The state hospital said it would take him to Orvill’s Mission. But the mission was closed, Wood said.

State hospital representatives did not return phone calls for comment.

No resources

The state hospital does not treat sex offenders, said Belles’ court-appointed attorney Neal Stelting,

Neither does anyone else. The only in-patient program for sex offenders in Wyoming is at the state prison, said Roger McDaniel, deputy director of the Wyoming Department of Health’s Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services Division.

“There’s something wrong with the system when we have someone who says, ‘I need help and I don’t want to hurt someone’ and they can’t get help,” Wood said.

Rhea, who met Belles 16 years ago when she worked for Community Entry Services, which helps mentally disabled people, said he was abused in the institutions he’s lived in since he was 10 years old. His IQ is just above the level at which he would be considered mentally retarded. If he were officially mentally retarded, he would qualify for more social services and there would be more ways to help him, Rhea said.

She said Belles was caught in a sting operation. But what happens the next time someone who was failed by the system is released back into a community? Maybe they won’t be caught before they hurt someone, Rhea cautioned.

As a mother, she said, if her daughter was molested and she found out the man who did it was trying to get help, she would come undone.

While the sting operation saved children from Belles, she said, it doesn’t get to the root of a community problem.

Searching for answers

She said the state and community need programs to help sex offenders.

“We failed Chris,” Rhea said. “Please, let’s not fail anyone else.”

Mental health and substance-abuse counselors from around the state met for a conference in Evanston this week. Keith Gingery, a state representative and deputy prosecuting attorney for Teton County, said sex-offender treatment was a hot topic.

“We do have programs,” Gingery said. “Can we do better? Of course.”

There are only outpatient programs in scattered communities. The nearest one to Jackson Hole is in Rock Springs, too far for a Teton County resident to travel regularly, especially if he’s borderline mentally retarded, said Deb Sprague, executive director of Jackson Hole Community Counseling.

Sprague said her center doesn’t offer services for sex offenders because sex-offender treatment requires specialized training, certification and equipment and there’s not enough demand in Jackson Hole to merit offering it.

“This is not just a problem in Wyoming,” said state official McDaniel.

Most states struggle with how to treat, house and contain serious sex offenders. He said some states are filling their prisons with them because judges don’t want to release them into the community. Some places are having to build geriatric units for the sex offenders growing old in the system, McDaniel said. Some states are building facilities where sex offenders can spend their lives. Some states are trying vigorous monitoring programs on probation. It’s an issue Wyoming officials talked about extensively at a conference in Evanston this week.

“The biggest problem is that there’s no consensus in the counseling community that this disorder can be effectively treated,” McDaniel said.

Rhea agreed that treatment wasn’t a likely solution for Belles.

“I’m the last person to defend a sex offender,” she said.

But she has wanted to see state resources for sex offenders for the last 15 years, she said. She hoped the Belles case might be good ammunition for a lawsuit against the state that would generate resources where there are currently none. But Belles has no money and no powerful friends and family to press a lawsuit, she said.

Though it was sunny outside Friday, Brian Hultman, deputy prosecuting attorney for Teton County, said it was “a dark day in the courtroom.”

With no alternatives, Hultman said he had no choice but to recommend a maximum sentence.

“I do that to protect the people I serve,” Hultman said.

Belles faced 10 to 50 years for the felony charge. The penalties were greater because of two previous convictions from 1992 in Teton County.

Stelting referred Friday to a fable probation agent Art Wolf wrote in Belles’ presentence report. The fable is the story of a scorpion who convinces a frog to carry it across the river on its back. The scorpion tells the frog that if he stings the frog, they’ll both surely die. Halfway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog and the frog asks why. The scorpion replies that he is a scorpion.

“That could apply to Chris Belles,” Stelting said. “But it could also be the system. Chris Belles was trying to get help and he’s the one who got stung. He was stung by the system.”

Stelting asked Guthrie to sentence Belles to a shorter prison term and order him into a new treatment program in the prison system for sex offenders. And he asked that if Belles graduated from the program, the judge allow him to be eligible for parole with strict supervision.

“There should be other alternatives,” Stelting said, “and it’s sad that there aren’t.”

Guthrie said she agreed with Belles’ advocates and Hultman that the situation was a sad one.

“The state has failed you,” Guthrie said to Belles. “But just because the system has failed you, I cannot fail my responsibility.”

Belles will serve 35 to 50 years and may participate in a sex-offender counseling program when authorities at the Wyoming State Penitentiary deem it’s appropriate. She gave him credit for time served, including the 30 days of voluntary confinement.
..News Source.. by Amanda H. Miller