Sex offender seeks OK to move to Costa Rica

6-19-2010 Florida:

VIERA — A convicted pedophile who wants to move to Costa Rica will have to wait until his defense attorney shows proof there is a system there to monitor his activities, a judge said Friday.

"I'm looking for an apparatus in that country that is the functional equivalent of our law," said Judge George Maxwell.

Tom Mastin, who is now 74, molested a 12-year-old boy in 1999 near Cocoa and subsequently fled to Costa Rica, authorities said. The boy was on a soccer team coached by Mastin.

He was forced to leave Costa Rica in 2007 when authorities there learned of the warrant for his arrest in the United States. He was brought back to Brevard and pleaded guilty to charges of lewd and lascivious molestation the next year. However, authorities said, he absconded to Costa Rica again in February 2008 and before being transported back to Brevard the next month.

In March 2009, Mastin was sentenced to two years in prison, one year of house arrest and 12 years of probation that included wearing a GPS monitor.

He spent only a few weeks in prison because he got credit for time spent at the Brevard County Detention Center, said Prosecutor Julia Lynch.

Mastin, who is an American citizen and lives near Sharpes, said in the courtroom that he wants to move to the Central American country because he has a partner and two children there. In Costa Rica, he coaches a soccer team with players in the age range of 18 to 25, Mastin said. His attorney, Todd Deratanay, said Mastin also owns a business in the country.

Lynch argued in the courtroom Friday that if Mastin were to move, the state would lose the ability to monitor him.

Lynch said the Brevard State Attorney's Office has not faced a situation like this before.

In 1984, Mastin pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges in Pinellas County for "unnatural behavior with a child." ..Source.. KAUSTUV BASU