Treatment lags for sex offenders after prison

1-8-2010 Connecticut:

HARTFORD — Leslie Williams was on probation as a convicted sex offender for three weeks when he disappeared from a Hartford homeless shelter one Friday in March 2008.

He was captured two days later while driving the car of a New Britain woman whose body had been found that night in a Bristol sandpit.

In that nearly 48 hours, Williams, then 31, managed to burglarize an Avon house and steal the family’s Saab, break into a Plainville home where he swiped a gun and invade a New Britain home where he shot Carol Laresse and sexually assaulted and kidnapped her friend, Mary Ellen Welsh.

It’s a scenario that state Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven, is hoping to prevent from happening again by challenging Gov. M. Jodi Rell to open a treatment facility to house sex offenders who are released back into the community.

“They are going to be released sooner or later,” Lawlor said during a Thursday morning press conference. “We have to have a way that they aren’t released into the community so they wind up in homeless shelters at night and on the streets all day.”

Why the facility didn’t open as planned is a matter of debate.

Lawlor, who is the co-chairman of General Assembly Judiciary Committee, claimed repeatedly that both the state Department of Corrections and the state Judicial Branch have the funding in place.

DOC officials said the Judicial Branch pulled out because of lack of funding.

Judicial officials said the state Office of Policy and Management and the governor cut the money for the project but they were ready to go ahead with a scaled-down version.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s office said, in a statement issued seven hours after Lawlor’s press conference, that the project would go ahead as planned with the DOC money and that the Judicial Branch had pulled out of the project even though it had the funding.

Even if the facility had opened as planned, it wouldn’t have been in time to save Welsh’s life. But the sooner it’s open, the less likely another family will face the same heartache, said Welsh’s lifelong friends.

“The state should be ashamed of itself,” said Southington resident Cynthia Holland, who along with Welsh’s friends, celebrates the slain woman’s birthday every year with the release of balloons and a large party at the New Britain Irish Club. “She was minding her own business. She was suffering from cancer, that was even worse, she couldn’t fight back. What kind of country do we live in when you can’t go to have coffee with a friend without being attacked?”

The proposed 24-bed facility was to be built on DOC property in Uncasville. The offenders would be offered housing and treatment such as aid with transitional skills including job placement while being supervised during either the last few months of their incarceration or the first few months of release.

“All the evidence tells us that if they are going to reoffend, they will do so in the first few months of their release,” Lawlor said.

The initiative to create the facility was part of a sweeping crime bill passed in January 2008 after three members of the Petit family were killed in a home invasion. The law required the facility to be open by July 2008.

Lawlor decided to make the project’s derailing an issue after being alerted by a DOC whistleblower that a sex offender with a history of sexually assaulting fellow inmates was about to be released to the community without any supervision.

“This has got to happen,” Lawlor said of the facility. “God forbid there’s a tragedy and someone gets killed because an unsupervised sex offender is walking around in the community.”

The problem is no one seemed to have the will in a tight budget year to act on the initiative that was set to be jointly funded by the DOC and Judicial Branch.

“The Department of Corrections and the Court Support Services Division (within the Judicial Branch) proceeded together each with a $1 million,” said Brian Garnett, a DOC spokesperson. “It went out to bid, we had selected a contractor. It was proceeding to the point where we were ready to sit down with CSSD in February 2009 but they said they wouldn’t be able to proceed.”

Judicial Branch officials issued a statement late Thursday saying their funding was rescinded twice by the OPM and governor, who eventually put back $500,000 for the project — but the DOC has since stalled the project.

“DOC agreed to act as the lead for this project” and issued the request for proposals in August 2008, said Chief Court Administrator Barbara Quinn. “It was understood that siting this type of facility would be extremely difficult. Subsequently, the DOC and judicial accepted a proposal that sited the facility on DOC property.

“Because the designated site was on DOC property, the Judicial Branch could not move forward with the project without DOC. To date, DOC has not entered into a contract to establish this facility. Therefore, the Judicial Branch has been unable to contract for the six sex-offender beds for which it received funding.”

While blaming judicial for the delay and saying they have discretionary control over their budget, Rell announced late Thursday the facility would move forward immediately with a new bid with funding primarily from DOC.

“The state has every intention to move forward with this much-needed facility,” Rell said. “Indeed, our commitment to seeing the project completed has never wavered. I absolutely will not compromise the public’s safety. It is disappointing that we lost valuable time when the Judicial Branch chose to withdraw from the partnership nearly 10 months after a contractor was selected. Because of that withdrawal, it is imperative that we must issue another request for proposals. The Department of Correction is going forward with another RFP for its half of the project.”

Williams had served an eight-year prison sentence for sexually assaulting a child and was on probation for three weeks when he left a Hartford homeless shelter after not being able to find work.

Two days later he followed Welsh into her friend’s New Britain home after he had spent the night sleeping in a nearby car. He later told police he intended to rob the women but then decided he had to kill them because they could recognize him. He is facing a dozen charges including capital felony murder and could face the death penalty.

Holland and several of Welsh’s other friends have attended all Williams’ court appearances.

“The way things are right now, if they are released with no supervision into the twilight zone, who are you going to notify?” Holland said. “There is no neighborhood to notify. I suppose a few months stay at a supervised place is better than nothing.” ..Source.. LISA BACKUS, Staff writer