Mother of low-IQ sex offender worries about loss of therapy program

11-24-2014 Minnesota:

With an IQ of 60, Claire Potter's 47-year-old son Clark verbalizes at the developmental level of a 13-year-old. But socially, he's even younger -- perhaps 8 years old, according to his mother.

He's also a sex offender. Although never charged with a crime, Clark Potter forced himself on his girlfriend at a group home for the mentally disabled some 20 years ago, his mother said. He later sexually assaulted a staff member's young child.

As a result, he spent a year in a state psychiatric facility, followed by 20 years in group therapy. For three hours a day, up to five days per week, he has met with therapists and other low-IQ sex offenders at ABC Mental Health Therapy on Payne Avenue in St. Paul.

That door is now closed. After losing a Ramsey County contract, the nonprofit officially called it quits Friday, capping nine years of running the "Onward" group therapy program in St. Paul. Metropolitan Community Mental Health Center ran Onward from 1970 to 2005 before it went out of business.

With painstaking effort and medication, Clark Potter has recognized his mistakes and avoided making new ones, his mother said through tears. He recently began job training after nearly two decades of preparation.

"There is nothing comparable to this program," said Claire Potter, a retired airline customer fraud investigator.

"It's such a niche. I'm terrified of having my son's support system yanked out from under him."

Ramsey County officials felt otherwise. Earlier this year, they informed ABC Mental Health director Dane Jorento that they would no longer contract with the nonprofit and another day-treatment therapy program, Pathways Counseling Center on University Avenue.

While the county did not fund ABC Mental Health directly, losing the contract eliminates the nonprofit's ability to qualify for reimbursement through Minnesota's Medicaid medical assistance program, known as MA.

Most clients have no income, and without the reimbursement, ABC Mental Health can't afford to pay its staff, Jorento said.

"All the staff, I think, already have job offers, as they are well-trained, awesome staff, and there is growing demand for therapist and therapy services," he said. "I really hope Ramsey County succeeds but unfortunately can't see that happening with going back to failed practices."

Jorento and several fellow therapists from Metropolitan Community Mental Health opened the nonprofit together and operated it for six years at Fairview and University avenues before relocating to Payne Avenue in 2011.

They believed their strategy toward treating low-IQ offenders was working, keeping the offenders and society safe.

Organized something akin to a support group, the approach helped clients suffering from brain injuries, autism and mental disabilities to acknowledge their crimes and then think through ways they could control their negative impulses.

The effort took years, and in some cases decades.

Jorento said his therapists worked with peeping Toms, clients who had engaged in public masturbation and some who had committed more serious offenses, such as sex assaults. Many, but not all, were referred through a county correctional system and had been found mentally incompetent to stand trial.

Ramsey County officials said they review all county contracts on a five-year basis and determined that the day-treatment programs no longer were meeting modern standards within their field.

They said they want each offender to have an individualized case plan, based on the latest research, with the goal of getting them back into work sites.

Jorento is skeptical.

"Most of our clients can't keep a job because they have offended at the job sites," he said.

"They need ongoing structure, oftentimes the first stable, safe structure they have ever experienced in their lives, to create stable and durable behavioral changes, including brain neurology changes.

"One-on-one therapy, one hour a week doesn't work with these clients and hasn't worked in the past," he said.

It's unclear what Ramsey County's new strategy will be for low-IQ offenders. Claire Potter said that in addition to the expense posed by residential programs, developmentally delayed clients like her son would be easy targets for more sophisticated predators.

"He falls between the cracks for a number of reasons," she said. "The programs that are available are for people who are much higher functioning, in which case he's the vulnerable person. It's like putting the lambs in with the wolves."

Based on discussions with various state Department of Human Services staff, Jorento believes there are 150 low-IQ sex offenders housed at the Minnesota Sex Offender Program, which is located at state psychiatric facilities in Moose Lake and St. Peter.

And someday, they may go free. The state of Minnesota is under increasing legal pressure to release patients who have been held for years after the end of their criminal sentences, especially if they are deemed low-risk.

If that happens, counties appear ill-equipped to direct them to appropriate services, Jorento said. Officials with the Department of Human Services confirmed last week that they had set up a contract with ABC Mental Health to provide therapy to low-IQ offenders if more are released.

Claire Potter still cries when she thinks of her son's sexual assaults two decades ago, and she said she spent years in therapy herself to relearn how to love him.

"He's in the right place," she said. "It has taken 20 years of therapy and medication to get him, in very tiny increments, to understand at all that what he has done is wrong."

On Friday, Jorento penned an open thank-you letter to county officials and state contacts within the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

"There will never be another nonprofit like ABC, as there are very few skilled and experienced people crazy enough to do so much for so little for the unwanted," Jorento wrote. "This fight, to get the best therapy services to vulnerable clients, is over."

Counseling sex offenders rarely results in awards and recognition, but Jorento has his share of fans.

"I thought he ran a very respected organization in the field," said Christopher Onken, who owns about 20 group homes in the south metro and has worked with ABC since it opened. "We should be expanding resources for this under served population, not reducing them." ..Source.. by Frederick Melo