Out of sight, out of mind? Some argue remote homes for sexual predators too risky

2-21-2010 California:

Desert Center — The clean, new mobile home looks out of place in this remote stretch of desert, set far off California Highway 177. The nearest other buildings are a vacant, boarded-up shack and a dusty, empty storefront.

It is here in this tiny unincorporated town of 300 some 50 miles east of Indio that the state of California is paying $2,000 a month for a sexually violent predator to live.

Steven Joseph Willett, 57, has a criminal record that includes four felony convictions for sex crimes — rape, two instances of attempted rape and lewd and lascivious acts with a child, involving a 13-year-old girl.

After his last prison stint, Willett in 1997 was declared a sexually violent predator by state officials, and committed to a state mental hospital.

California's Sexually Violent Predator Act, enacted in 1996, allows for civil commitment of sex offenders found to pose extreme danger to society after release from prison. The sexually violent predator label, according to state law, applies to a small group of inmates found by mental health professionals to have diagnosable mental disorders likely to cause them to commit another offense.

“They are the worst of the worst,” said Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco.

Willett is one of 19 men committed under the program ever granted conditional release, according to the California Department of Mental Health.

Robert S. Knapp, acting director of Atascadero State Hospital, wrote on May 1, 2007: “It is my opinion, to a degree of medical certainty, that the patient, Mr. Steven Willett, would not be a danger to the health and safety of others in that it is not likely he will engage in sexually violent criminal behavior due to his diagnosed mental disorder if under supervision and treatment in the community.”

In September 2008 Riverside County Superior Court Judge Ronald L. Taylor concurred, and ordered Willett's conditional release.

At county officials' urging, Taylor ordered Willett placed in Desert Center, one of Riverside County's smallest, most rural communities.

Pacheco said his goal with Willett's conditional release was to “keep him out of the populated areas, and let's make sure we keep an eye on him.”

Willett has lived in Desert Center since September, wearing a GPS ankle bracelet, his restrictions including no Internet and semi-regular polygraph tests.
Willett declined to comment for this story.

The court's order forced the state to pay more than $34,000 to prepare the property for a mobile home, whereas the program typically uses ready-to-move-in locations, California Department of Mental Health Assistant Director Nancy Kincaid said.

Round-the-clock security guards are used in the first weeks after a sexually violent predator is placed in a community, both for neighbors' protection and to protect the predator from angry community members as emotions run high, Kincaid said. State officials determined Willett's remote placement required two guards over eight weeks, which cost another $44,000.

Rent, utilities, food and a delivered water supply for Willett cost the state about $2,000 a month. His outpatient sex offender treatment costs about $2,000 per month as well, Kincaid said.

Over the course of a year, the costs associated with Willett's conditional release would total approximately $126,000, not including travel expenses for treatment, according to figures provided by Kincaid. She said she wasn't sure what travel costs are in Willett's case, but said they are higher than is typical due to the more than two-hour drive to get Willett to sex offender treatment in western Riverside County multiple times per week.

The cost for an individual in inpatient treatment is $185,000 per year, Kincaid said.
The state bears the costs of living for conditionally released predators if they don't have the financial means — many do — or until the individual is employed and begins to pay their own expenses, Kincaid said.

Many of the other 18 conditionally released sexually violent predators were placed in rural locations, often as a necessity due to Jessica's Law requirements that sex offenders live more than 2,000 feet from a school or park where children gather. But Willett's placement is the most remote.

Mental health officials disagreed with placing Willett in Desert Center, preferring two ready for move-in sites in the Whitewater area. The remote location will impede Willett's reintegration into society and will make it more difficult to gauge whether he's changed, state mental health officials argued in court filings.

John Beach, who owns property near Willett's new home, has gone to court to try to get county officials to release records that could show whether they had an improper involvement in determining Willett's placement.

“Putting Willett here against the advice of the mental health experts means that Willett could eventually be released from court supervision and still be a threat and still hurt a young woman,” Beach said.

• • •

Willett's days are mostly spent alone in his mobile home, where he has satellite television. He has no car and, in these early months as a conditionally released predator, no job, Kincaid said.

His excursions largely consist of trips to treatment and the occasional outing to a store or other location, accompanied by personnel from Liberty Healthcare, the state-contracted company that oversees the conditional release program, she said.

At the Desert Center Café less than a half-mile from Willett's home, bring up his name and the outrage rises in waitress and nearby resident Cheryl Magsam's voice.

“We have girls that work the nighttime shift alone,” she said.

Sheriff's officials came last summer to the community to talk to residents, but by then Willett's placement was a done deal, Magsam said.

“They dumped him on the desert,” she said.

Desert Center area resident Dawn Rettagliata can see Willett's mobile home from the parking lot of McGoo's general store where she works.

She said she resents that county officials pushed to locate Willett in her neighborhood, and that a judge approved it.

“We don't count for anything, because we don't make enough of a vote to change anything,” she said.

• •
A similar negative reaction occurs every time a sexually violent predator is placed in a community, said Monica Williams, a graduate student with the University of California at Davis, whose doctoral dissertation is on community responses to sexually violent predator placements.

Threats to landlords have caused some to back out of providing a residence, Williams said.

“Communities a lot of times don't find out until the placement is happening or is very close to happening,” she said. “They feel like they have no say in the process.”
California officials in 2003 tried 116 different locations in Monterey County for the first conditionally released sexually violent predator, Brian DeVries, but met vehement community opposition at every turn. DeVries was ultimately located in a trailer on the grounds of a state prison in Soledad.

On three occasions the state has conditionally released sexually violent predators as homeless — a move decried by mental health officials.

“It increases the danger to the individual, to society and it increases state expenses dramatically to monitor them,” Kincaid said.

Even more difficult to follow up on are the more than 175 sexually violent predators unconditionally released by courts since the program's inception, often over the protests of state mental health officials.

No one monitors them beyond their required registry as a sex offender — which is not always followed as required — and many leave California, Kincaid said. Whether these predators go on to commit new sex crimes isn't tracked, she said.

Jack Sporich spent nine years in a California prison for molesting as many as 500 boys on camping outings dating back to the 1960s.

Sporich then spent more than three years in a state mental health facility as a designated sexually violent predator, where he refused treatment. He was released by a judge in 2004 after a second jury deadlocked on whether Sporich remained a danger.

Sporich's release deeply troubled the prosecutor who had him committed as a sexually violent predator.

“If I had to pick from a list of former and current SVPs (sexually violent predators), he would be, by far, the first one I would be most concerned about,'' Ventura County prosecutor David Lehr, who handled Sporich's initial commitment to Atascadero, told The Sacramento Bee in 2006.

Lehr's fears proved well-founded.

Sporich, now 75, was arrested in Cambodia in August 2009 along with two other alleged American sex tourists.

Sporich was dubbed “The Pied Piper of Pedophiles” by police, as he was alleged to have rode a motor scooter through the poorest neighborhoods of the Cambodian city of Siem Reap, dropping a trail of Cambodian money to lure young boys back to his home to sexually assault them.

Sporich has pleaded not guilty to molestation charges, and his case remains pending in federal court in Los Angeles.

• • •

Kincaid said she believes the sexually violent predator program is working.
“Everything we know in science right now does say that these are people who cannot be cured, but who can be treated,” she said.

Similar to alcoholism, gambling and other forms of addiction, treatment is necessary for a lifetime, and participants need to remain active in and committed to their treatment, Kincaid said.

None of the 19 conditionally released sexually violent predators are known to have committed new crimes, she said, though four were returned to mental health facilities for violating terms of their release.

Two conditionally released predators have since moved to unconditional release, Kincaid said.

Whether Willett will eventually be free without conditions is uncertain.
“Each time there is a court hearing to update his progress, he has opportunity to petition the court for unconditional release or lifting some of his conditions,” Kincaid said. ..Source.. Keith Matheny