Posted on 12/04/2002 2:28:14 AM PST by ppaul
The 17-year-old lives in isolation, in a room created just for him. His visitors are therapists and teachers, and, of course, there are the round-the-clock guards. The cost to keep him at the state's Green Hill Training School in Chehalis: $1,000 a day, $30,000 a month.Last year, the teen became the youngest person ever to be considered for incarceration as a "sexually violent predator" at McNeil Island's Special Commitment Center.
As a ward of Washington and a minor, the state has little choice but to try to treat and educate him. And until he turns 18, he cannot be sent to McNeil Island, the treatment program for the state's most dangerous adult sex offenders.
While his diagnosis as a teenage sexual predator is rare, his story illustrates the difficulties and enormous cost facing the state in caring for minors deemed too dangerous for foster care. In recent years, there has been just one other minor legally declared a sexual predator in the state.
As for the Green Hill teen, "there isn't really a budget" for his care, said Mark Seling, superintendent of the Special Commitment Center, the McNeil Island treatment program for the state's most dangerous sex offenders. "We're just having to pay for it."
As with other "high roller" foster kids, who often have profound behavioral problems and criminal pasts, the state's handling of the Green Hill teen has drawn sharp criticism.
His public defender believes he was labeled a sexually violent predator because the state Department of Social and Health Services mishandled him as a foster child.
"There are kids with extraordinary criminal histories, and (he) is not one of them," said Leslie Garrison, juvenile unit supervisor of Seattle's Public Defender Association. "I think the state has no idea what to do with him."
Because he is a juvenile, The Seattle Times has decided not to name him, and he could not be interviewed. But court records show a troubled past.
At 11, he was left by his mother when she boarded a cross-country bus in 1996. The mother, who the state contends beat her son, could not be reached for comment, nor could his father.
He's lived in at least 20 foster homes and treatment centers. His IQ is below average. And he likely suffers severe psychiatric problems, according to a psychological assessment.
His grandmother told a psychologist the boy tried to rape her, and she believes he sexually assaulted two of his sisters, according to court records. He was expelled from Seattle's Meany Middle School at 13 for touching the breasts and buttocks of a female student, and he was kicked out of another school for urinating in a girl's water bottle. Police also investigated, but didn't charge, an allegation the boy fondled his 7-year-old cousin, then punched the child's genitals as a warning not to tell anyone.
The teen denied having sexual contact with relatives, family members or anyone more than two years younger than himself, according to an undated court record.
In 2000, he attempted to rape a girl in his foster home, and later was found to have groped three other girls at the home, court records show. Garrison, the teen's public defender, alleges that DSHS didn't warn the foster home of the teen's previous sexual deviancy when it placed him there. "They did him a huge disservice by that placement," she said.
Citing confidentiality laws, DSHS officials said they could not talk about the teen's case. But, in general, the agency says it carefully evaluates sexually aggressive youth in determining where best to place them.
Last year, the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office and the teen's attorneys worked out a deal to send the boy to a rural Pennsylvania treatment center, a last-ditch attempt to treat him as a youth. But he was kicked out for unspecified reasons and handed over to Seling, the superintendent of the state's Special Commitment Center.
"We tried to do something unusual with him, given his age and condition," said Dan Satterberg, chief of staff for the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office. "It didn't work. We're back to square one."
Because the state's Special Commitment Center was built for adults, Seling found a vacant ward above Green Hill's administration building. His staff laid fresh carpet and painted, gave him a TV, and allowed him to put up a couple of posters. He has no contact with the 212 other juveniles at Green Hill.
Satterberg acknowledged the arrangements at Green Hill are expensive, but said his office tried to be empathetic.
"He's a ward of the state. ... You're going to pay until he's an emancipated adult. It is expensive now because we're having to create a custom program for him. He is it."
The cost for caring for the teen is driven by those who care and watch over him. He has guards, is treated by a Chehalis-area therapist who specializes in treating juvenile sex offenders, and is visited by a vocational therapist and a staff therapist, both of whom commute from McNeil Island to Chehalis.
The teen has been at Green Hill since late September, and will likely stay there until his 18th birthday in February. At that time, a King County jury will decide whether it's appropriate to send him to McNeil Island.
His case underscores the contortions DSHS must go through in dealing with juvenile sex offenders.
In January, for example, a 13-year-old sex offender had to briefly sleep in DSHS offices when Whidbey Island neighbors protested his placement at an Oak Harbor foster home. He, too, was eventually sent to a treatment facility in Pennsylvania.
But unlike the Green Hill teen, the 13-year-old was not classified as a sexually violent predator, the most serious designation within the legal system.
DSHS officials say it's impossible to know if they'll refer more juveniles to the courts for consideration as sexual predators. But some defense attorneys say they worry that the state will seek that status for other hard-to-place foster kids, a potentially debilitating, lifelong label.
To be considered a sexually violent predator, juveniles must: have a criminal history, be a predator and have a "mental abnormality." Such a determination is made by two screening committees, including one from the Department of Corrections.
Recommendations are forwarded to prosecutors who then can take the case before a judge and jury.
"This happens very rarely," said Kathleen Harvey, administrator of the sex-offender program in the DSHS Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration. "It really comes down to looking at the statute and seeing if they meet those definitions or not."
If they do, isolating a teen with serious sexual aggression is not necessarily a bad avenue for changing the behavior, so long as treatment includes intensive mental-health therapy, said Dr. Eric Trupin, a University of Washington psychiatry professor who frequently consults with DSHS on juvenile-detention issues.
Sexually aggressive behavior, Trupin said, "is very difficult to change, but there is good evidence you can change it, particularly in young people."
Jonathan Martin: 206-464-2605 or jonathanmartin@seattletimes.com.
Your tax dollars at work.
And, they must also have a driver's license, a Sam's Club card and a Powerball ticket for next Saturday night.
What the hell's up with the people who write the laws? I'd say "predator" by itself would be sufficient reason for any incarceration or remediation to take place.
America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
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They did him a huge disservice??!!
He probably began his career as a sex offender LONG before he got caught. They don't just suddenly decide to go on a sex binge.
-- Bromberg & Harrison
You're right in pointing this out. The real cutting should have begun on the mother and father of this now destroyed human being.
That is why in Florida, minors who commit violent crimes are tried and imprisoned as adults. To be considered a child, you must be too young to have concepts of "Good and Evil.
A Turkish prison will teach this guy the meaning of sexual predation.
How about $4.95 (plus tax) for a length of stout rope and call it a bargain for everybody?
It is not a huge assumption being made here; it is the ubiquitous background found in criminals, most of whom have little or no contact with their fathers and come from abusive backgrounds. Until adults who fail their responsibilities are brought to account, we will continue to have to deal with these predators.
I am so sick of adults who ignore their responsibilities and who expect more out of juveniles than they do out of adults.
The key difference in those individuals who overcome their background is that there was one person who made a difference in their lives.
Children are not naturally good; they have to be taught. If no one teaches a child right from wrong, they do not instinctively know it. That is the problem with your view - you are assuming that these kids have a moral education, which many of them don't.
My friends who are teachers have observed that this is not so much an immoral generation, as an amoral generation - they have not been taught right from wrong in many instances.
You have taken a small aspect of my comment and blown it up large; my point is that the parents of this minor failed him utterly and because they didn't do their job, the public has to deal with him. They are deserving of some punishment also.
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