A turning point for state's sex offender program

2-19-2012 Minnesota:

A man who has admitted to molesting 29 children is about to become the first in over a decade to be freed from the state's St. Peter facility. His release will test the ability of behavioral science.

One day soon, perhaps as early as next Saturday, convicted child molester Clarence Opheim will walk off the campus at the Minnesota Security Hospital in St. Peter and into a cauldron of politics and community apprehension.

The first patient to be discharged from the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) in more than a decade, Opheim, 64, will take his first steps at an intensive St. Paul therapy program called Project Pathfinder.

Together, they will test whether Minnesota can navigate a historic turning point for the controversial sex offender program. Since it was created in 1994 to hold and treat dangerous offenders who had completed their prison sentences, death has been virtually the only way out. But with a population that has soared to 635 patients, annual costs in the millions of dollars, and looming court challenges filed by restive patients, the program faces mounting pressures to find an alternative to indefinite detention.

"Clarence knows there's a lot riding on him, the first guy out of the gate," said a former sex offender from Minneapolis who has volunteered to be one of Opheim's mentors. "Can he make it? Will he screw up? He's going to be a little nervous. And that's good."

Said Dennis Benson, who directs the MSOP: "We know people are nervous and will be watching closely. But we believe, as do the three judges who made the final decision, that the strength of the treatment and the strength of our continuing watchfulness will keep the risk low."

Pathfinder's executive director, Warren Maas, also knows much is riding on Opheim's success. His program is one of about 20 in Minnesota that treat sex offenders, and one of the most respected. It has a state contract to work with 10 patients now in their final stage of MSOP treatment.

Maas said 97 percent of Pathfinder's graduates who meet all 19 goals do not re-offend. "We think everyone can succeed here," he said. "But not everybody will. Some people just cannot, or will not, do the work."

Whether sex offenders can be "cured,'' and which therapy works best, has been a topic of study for decades. There is no clear answer, in part because the 50 states have so many different programs, each treating small populations of offenders, often over a period of years. But a large Canadian study published in 2002 found that recidivism rates -- the share of patients who re-offend within five years -- can be roughly cut in half by effective programs, from 18 percent to about 10 percent.

Opheim will face intense therapy for years, possibly the rest of his life. And he will be watched, tracked electronically and spied upon. ..For the rest of this story: by WARREN WOLFE , Star Tribune