CALIFORNIA GOES EASY ON VIOLENT SEX OFFENDERS

A decade ago, as California was gripped with outrage over the release of a notorious rapist from prison, the state took bold action. Legislators vowed to keep the highest-risk sex offenders locked up for years after completing their prison sentences. They were to be sent to a maximum-security psychiatric facility - Atascadero State Hospital - for a strict, five-stage treatment program.

California's solution was considered among the nation's toughest. But the program has a fatal flaw, a six-month investigation by The Bee has found, because there is a much easier way out of Atascadero, one chosen by the vast majority of sexually violent predators housed there: Refuse treatment and bank on winning release through the court hearing each offender receives every two years.

That loophole makes California's get-tough solution in practice one of the most lenient sexually violent predator laws in the nation. It is precisely how 54 rapists and child molesters won release through the end of 2005 from their Atascadero commitments, according to a review of court records and interviews with dozens of prosecutors, law enforcement officers and sexually violent predators in California, Oregon, Arizona, Missouri and Colorado. Only four men have completed the five-step program, and one of those was returned to custody less than two months after his release.

To be declared a sexually violent predator and sent to Atascadero, offenders must have at least two sex-crime convictions, and prosecutors must convince a court that they are likely to re-offend if released directly from prison. But there is no guarantee that the offenders will remain in Atascadero. Some convinced state psychiatrists that they were unlikely to commit a new offense, which obligates the state to set them free. Others won release after juries could not agree whether they should continue to be held. Still others were freed after county district attorneys did not challenge the offenders' petitions for release, judging them too old or infirm to re-offend. None of the 54 went through the full regimen of treatment the state designed for them. More than two-thirds underwent no treatment at all.

"All they need is a doctor's slip to get out," said Harriet Salarno, president of Crime Victims United of California. "Nobody should be let out unless they're truly rehabilitated."

Instead, an investigation of the program found that in California:

* There's a built-in incentive to refuse treatment, because the few offenders who actually follow the hospital's full program find themselves not only targets of scorn inside Atascadero but subject to both tighter scrutiny and community protests upon release.

* Nearly all of the highest-risk sex offenders released from Atascadero without completing treatment have returned to society with less supervision than lower-risk sex offenders freed directly from prison.

* Members of the public have no sure way to tell if a sexually violent predator has settled in their neighborhood because the state refuses to identify them as such.

Despite that policy, The Bee found the last-known locations of all 54 sexually violent predators who were released through the end of 2005 without completing the treatment program. The search included use of court records, public documents, media archives, Internet search tools and interviews with law enforcement and county prosecutors throughout California. It also relied on cooperation from some Atascadero patients and released sex offenders, as well as California's Megan's List, the attorney general's Internet listing of all sex offenders registered with California law-enforcement agencies.

Eleven of the 54 men are back in custody, including one convicted of molesting two girls he was baby-sitting two years after his release. Two were accused of new sex-related crimes. At least 10 left the state after release, some saying that life as a convicted sex offender is easier outside California, where registration requirements and monitoring efforts can be even less stringent. Seven have died, and three currently are in violation of their quarterly registration requirements, including one - Donald Warren Delaney - who seems to have disappeared.

Authorities say Delaney, a 77-year-old former Stockton police sergeant, has dropped from sight and may be in Mexico. Delaney, sentenced to 24 years in prison in 1985 for lewd acts on nine children, was released from Atascadero on March 25. California's Megan's List indicates he is incarcerated, but there is no record of him in any California prison, and San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney Stephen Taylor said he may have left the country. One property record linked Delaney to an address in Pollock Pines that turned out to be a logging road with no homes.

Most of the 54 who failed to start or complete treatment simply moved into communities around California and the nation with little or no public notice, no requirement that they wear satellite tracking devices, and none of the parole restrictions heaped on other sexual offenders, such as the ability of law enforcement officials to search their homes and computers without a search warrant.

The only additional monitoring for sexually violent predators who stayed in California was a requirement to register quarterly with local police - as opposed to the annual registration required of other sex offenders. The sexually violent predators' faces, names and addresses do show up on the state's Megan's List site, along with general descriptions of their crimes, but there's no way to differentiate them from the 63,000 other registered sex offenders depicted there. Many other states provide more detailed information on offenders and their crimes and whether they are high-risk offenders.

In California, from the top on down, law enforcement officials typically refuse to identify sexually violent predators who have been released. Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office rejected a California Public Records Act request by The Bee for their names and whereabouts.


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