Rickie Morton spent two years getting a tattoo symbolizing the time he was molested by Timothy Lee Boggs in 1988. The dragon is seen as a protector, and nine blossoms and fallen petals represent his lost innocence. He says the tattoo will be complete when he is done healing. • See additional images Sacramento Bee/Paul Kitagaki Jr.

Sex predator is due back

Now grown, victim has flashbacks

By Sam Stanton -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Monday, March 13, 2006

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EDMOND, Ore. - Eighteen years have gone by since Rickie Morton was molested as a young boy, but he retains a vivid memory of the man slipping into the bedroom of his Sacramento home in complete darkness.

"The house is just pitch black," the 27-year-old former area baseball star recalled in an interview last week. "All I could see was this red cherry, this cigarette just creeping toward me."

Behind the lit cigarette was Timothy Lee Boggs, a car salesman, welder and fishing guide who had taken 9-year-old Rickie and his family on fishing trips.

Only much later would the family learn that Boggs had been convicted four years earlier of fondling another 9-year-old boy.

Boggs is now 51 and considered by the state to be a sexually violent predator, a classification that landed him in the Atascadero State Hospital in 1999 after eight years in prison. Because he had more than one victim and was found by a court to have a mental disorder that could make him likely to re-offend, Boggs was sent to the state hospital's treatment program.

Now, he is poised to be released somewhere in Sacramento County as only the fifth man to complete the state's four-stage treatment program inside Atascadero since 1996. More than 550 men have been committed to the program at Atascadero, but more than two-thirds refuse to take part in treatment there, a recent Bee investigation found.

Boggs' release has been scheduled for 10 months, but has been delayed repeatedly while officials figure out where he can live while undergoing the strict monitoring and outpatient therapy required in the fifth and final stage of treatment for such offenders.

Boggs has declined to be interviewed, but once he is moved out of Atascadero he can expect to face the same scrutiny that accompanied the releases of some of California's most notorious sex offenders.

Patrick Ghilotti, Brian DeVries, Cary Verse and Matthew Hedge all completed the treatment program inside Atascadero, and upon release all four of them were hounded by loud protests and media attention.

Verse was forced from four homes by such protests, and Hedge lasted only six weeks on the outside before state officials won a court order returning him to Atascadero.

Boggs' victims have been bracing for his release since last October, when officials from Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully's office warned them that he soon might be released.

Rickie Morton's mother still recalls passing by her young son's room in 1988 after the molestations had been discovered and hearing him "saying his prayers, over and over and over, saying 'Now, I lay me down to sleep, now I lay me down to sleep.' "

"I would go in the morning and there would be a BB gun, a couple of knives and a baseball bat under his covers," said Viktoria Fenech. "I never realized he was that scared of this."

Fenech, a Sacramento hairdresser who met Boggs when he became her client, decided to tell her story after reading The Bee stories about Atascadero. Her son also agreed to discuss the case, saying victims' perspectives need to be heard.

"I know it's not my fault, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't bother me, that it doesn't affect me," said Morton, who works for a wireless telephone company in Redmond, a town of about 21,000 in central Oregon.

"And it's not some dramatic thing where I sit down in the road and cry all day. It's just, you drive by somewhere or you meet a guy named Tim and there it is. You have those bad times. It's not a pity party, but you think about it, and you wish things could be different."

Morton is hardly a candidate for self-pity. An affable man with a close-cropped brown beard and a constant smile, he moves with confidence in restaurants and taverns, engaging waitresses and fellow patrons with ease.

He was a star athlete in the Sacramento region, playing baseball at Yuba High School and then moving on in the late 1990s to Sacramento City College's championship teams. Later, he played at the University of the Pacific in Stockton.

He was drafted in June 2001 by the Cleveland Indians organization in the 25th round, and played first base for minor league teams before his career ended short of the majors in 2004.

Morton returned to UOP to earn his English degree, then moved to Redmond in January.

Though he said he has told a few close friends about how he was victimized, he does not dwell on it if people notice that he seems down at times.

"Because what do you say?" Morton said. " 'Hey, what's with you?' Oh, I got molested when I was a child. 'Oh, OK. Sorry.'

"You can't drop stuff like that on people."

Over the years, however, the molestations have remained "a constant demon in the corner of my life," Morton wrote in a letter to Scully's office in October, when he learned Boggs might soon be released.

As part of his effort to heal himself, Morton has had work done for two years on an elaborate tattoo over his left arm and shoulder, one that features nine rose blossoms and nine fallen rose petals to signify his age when the molestations occurred.

There are Japanese symbols for child, innocence and thief, and a dragon peering through clouds that he sees as a protector. The tattoo is not complete "because I'm not finished dealing with this yet."

His mother also feels such anguish and anger over what Boggs did, that even after 18 years, she readily volunteers that, when she discovered the molestations, she drove toward Boggs' home with a pistol in her car.

"I was on my way over to kill him," Fenech said, explaining that she only changed her mind after realizing she did not know how she would react if he begged her for mercy.

Fenech opted to let the courts handle the matter. It was only during preparation for trial that she learned her son had not been Boggs' first victim.

Court records show Boggs had been arrested years before and charged in connection with molesting a boy he was baby-sitting on New Year's Eve 1973, but those charges were later dropped for lack of evidence.

He was arrested again in July 1984 after molesting a 9-year-old boy sleeping on a boat Boggs was using to take the boy's family on a fishing trip, court records show. The incident occurred while the boy's mother, stepfather and twin brother slept elsewhere on the boat.

Boggs eventually pleaded no contest to those charges and was sentenced to 180 days in jail and five years of probation. In fact, he was still on probation when he began molesting Rickie Morton in 1988.

After going to Rickie's mother's hairdressing business, Boggs got to know the family well. He sold them a car and Rickie's father suggested he throw in a fishing trip as part of the deal.

After that, Boggs often took the Mortons on fishing trips in the Redding area. Over time the family came to trust him enough to suggest he stay at their home the night before departure so they could get an early start.

During those overnights, Boggs would sometimes make his way to Rickie's room at the end of the house opposite where his parents slept.

He was arrested May 25, 1988, after possibly molesting Rickie as many as five times. The family discovered it only after Boggs called the Morton home one night when the parents were out bowling. Rickie's older sister was baby-sitting, and when she saw her brother's hysterical reaction at learning Boggs was calling she became suspicious and hung up.

She began quizzing Rickie, and when his parents came home the story came out.

Boggs was arrested, and on Aug. 10, 1989, convicted and sentenced to 13 years in prison. He was released early, in August 1996, and scheduled for nearly three years of parole, court records state.

However, a routine visit from a parole officer two months before his parole was to end turned up two empty beer cans in his garbage, a violation of parole restrictions prohibiting him from possessing alcohol.

The parole violation was his first, but his parole agent believed "that this is subject's way of crying out for help," a 1999 psychologist's report states. Boggs was ordered sent to Atascadero as a sexually violent predator.

He has undergone treatment since then, taking classes on how to avoid situations that could lead him to re-offend and to recognize what led to his crimes. Last spring, Boggs won a court order approving his release back into the community.

Since then, county law-enforcement officials have been working with state Department of Mental Health representatives to arrange for Boggs' placement.

At one point last year, Liberty Healthcare, a Pennsylvania firm that contracts with the state to supervise sexually violent predators who complete the treatment program at Atascadero, had located a home for Boggs in Herald. Now officials will say only that they continue to seek proper housing for him.

Once a location is settled on, Boggs will not be able to slip out into society, unlike the Atascadero offenders who do not get treatment but are released anyway after a court hearing. His neighbors will be notified in advance and he will have to wear a satellite-tracking device. He will be required to report his comings and goings regularly to authorities and be subject to unannounced visits by parole officers.

And, as history suggests, Boggs' reintroduction to society will not go smoothly.

The fact that Boggs has gone through treatment provides little solace to his victims.

"I don't think he should ever be released," Fenech said. "I don't think it's ever going to be safe for him to be out."

Morton is less emphatic than his mother. He does not remember details of being molested, he said, but adds that Boggs' crimes have left an indelible mark on his life nonetheless.

"I guess it's like your own agony," he said. "No one can feel it, it's inside you and no words or amount of tears can ever take that away.

"You can go on with your life, you can do anything. But it's like a humongous stain on the inside of your soul."

About the writer:

• The Bee's Sam Stanton can be reached at (916) 321-1091 or sstanton@sacbee.com.