Release of sex convict delayed

As residents of Folsom and Elk Grove protested proposals to release one of the state's highest risk sex offenders into their communities, a judge on Friday delayed the decision two months while state and local officials continue to wrangle over where he should live and who is responsible for finding him housing.

Timothy Lee Boggs, a child molester who has spent the last eight years as a patient in the sexually violent predator program at the state mental hospital in Atascadero, was arrested three times in the 1970s and '80s for molesting young boys -- including the son of a Sacramento hairdresser.

Friday's outcry underscored the difficulty the state faces in placing sex offenders it once designated as predators, even though they have since completed their treatment.

Two sites where a trailer home could be placed for Boggs on the sprawling grounds of Folsom Prison are among at least a half-dozen that have been considered for Boggs by the state Department of Mental Health. Other proposals have included a halfway house in Galt and a trailer on the grounds of the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center 3½ miles south of Elk Grove, which officials said is the most likely site.

That news did not sit well with Gary Adam Pruitt, 50, owner of Pruitt's Once and Again consignment furniture store in Franklin, just over six miles from the county's branch jail, who called the idea "a scary thought."

"We are a close-knit community," said Pruitt, who said he would talk to the principal of nearby Franklin Elementary School and anticipated a neighborhood petition drive against Boggs' placement. "There are a number of families who have little boys ... I can't believe they're going to put him out here."

Undersheriff John McGinness said his department also opposes putting Boggs in a trailer at the jail because Boggs is a state prisoner, and not the responsibility of county law enforcement officials.

"We have no obligation that I can see," McGinness said. "Admittedly it's rural, but we think it's a highly inappropriate place for him to be housed. There are residences nearby."

In Folsom Friday afternoon, city leaders held a news conference amid the shouts of children playing at Folsom City Park to protest the prison's inclusion on a list of possible sites -- just as attorneys representing Boggs, the state Department of Mental Health and several county agencies met in Judge Ronald Tochterman's downtown courtroom.

"It's not that we're against the release," said Sue Halfman, principal of St. John's Notre Dame School, which has 324 pupils from kindergarten through eighth grade and sits a block from the prison grounds. "It's the location."

But the location doesn't matter to Viktoria Fenech, the Sacramento-area hairdresser whose son Rickie Morton has spoken openly about being one of Boggs' victims at age 9.

"There's no place for these guys," Fenech said. "They should be kept on the grounds of whatever prison they're in and have to stay there. These guys can't be helped."

Boggs' attorney, Kenneth Rosenfeld, said his client is no longer a threat.

"He's ready to show the community he would never offend again," said Rosenfeld. "Through therapy, he's ready to deal with the issues in his life."

Boggs, 52, is only the fifth man to successfully complete the sexually violent predator program at Atascadero State Hospital since it was started 10 years ago. None of the other four men who completed treatment has re-offended, although one was returned to the mental hospital because he wasn't participating in required outpatient therapy.

Boggs was ordered into the community placement phase of the treatment a year ago, but officials with the state Department of Mental Health have not been able to find a suitable location for him. While he waits, Boggs remains in the mental hospital.

As part of his community placement, Boggs would have to wear a global positioning satellite monitor whenever he left his home, participate in therapy and submit to daily reviews of his activities by a caseworker.

At Friday's hearing, attorney Rosenfeld accused Mental Health Director Stephen Mayberg of delaying placement and suggested to the judge that Mayberg should be confined at the Atascadero mental hospital as punishment.

Sacramento Superior Court Judge Ronald Tochterman instead ordered the state and its placement and oversight contractor, Liberty Healthcare, to report back on steps they have taken to find Boggs housing. He also asked attorneys to submit in writing their positions on whether it would violate state law to release Boggs unconditionally -- without specialized placement or restrictions on his movement.

And he ordered the state to explain why it waited until April 4 to seek help from Sacramento County officials in finding a placement for Boggs.

Boggs has a criminal history involving children that dates back decades. Court records show he was arrested and charged in 1973 in connection with the molestation of a boy he was baby-sitting on New Year's Eve. Those charges later were dropped for lack of evidence.

His next arrest came in July 1984, when he was accused of molesting a 9-year-old boy who was sleeping on a boat while Boggs took the boy's family on a fishing trip, court records show.

He pleaded no contest to charges in that case and was sentenced to 180 days in jail and five years of probation. He was still on probation when he was arrested May 25, 1988, and charged with molesting 9-year-old Rickie Morton.

Boggs was sentenced in that case to 13 years in prison, but served only seven years before he was paroled, court records show. He had just two months left on his parole when an officer making a routine visit found two empty beer cans in his garbage, a violation of parole restrictions against possessing alcohol.

That violation led to him being returned to prison and declared by a court to be a "sexually violent predator," a classification that landed him at Atascadero State Hospital.

At Atascadero, sexually violent predators are offered an intensive, four-phase therapy program. About three-quarters of the 550 sexually violent predators sent there in the past decade have refused the treatment, a Bee investigation earlier this year found. The program is in the process of moving to a new state hospital in Coalinga.

Instead, most patients take advantage of a loophole in the law that allows them to demand court hearings every two years on whether they should be released. Through the end of 2005, 54 rapists and child molesters won release from Atascadero through such hearings.

But Boggs agreed to take part in the treatment program and last year became the fifth man to complete all four phases at the hospital. The fifth phase calls for monitoring and therapy in the community, and Boggs must do that in Sacramento County, where he was convicted.

The other four men released under the program -- Patrick Ghilotti, Brian DeVries, Cary Verse and Matthew Hedge -- all had difficulty finding housing and often were hounded by protests and media attention that drove them from home to home. The solution in some cases has been to place the offenders in trailers on prison property until they could find more permanent housing.

Last November, for example, Hedge was moved to a trailer on the grounds of the state prison at Otay Mesa, south of San Diego. He lasted only six weeks before officials won a court order returning him to Atascadero for not following the rules of his outpatient treatment.

In addition to Boggs, three other men have been ordered released by judges back to their home counties:

• Douglas Badger, 63, a San Diego rapist who targeted male hitchhikers, will face a hearing next week to determine if he is to be placed on a trailer on the grounds of the RJ Donovan Correctional Center in Otay Mesa.

• Paul Edward George, 55, is seeking release in San Francisco.

• Ross Wollschlager, 42, a prowler and rapist who targeted young women and girls as young as 10 in Ventura County in the 1980s, by breaking into their bedrooms at night.

Asked about the other three, Kirsten Macintyre, spokeswoman for the state Department of Mental Health, said, "I don't know the time frame ... I can tell you we're somewhere in the process of looking for housing."

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A loophole makes California's one of the most lenient sexually violent predator laws in the nation. Go to www.sacbee.com/content/news/projects/predators/.

About the writer:

• The Bee's Mareva Brown can be reached at (916) 321-1088 or mbrown@sacbee.com.