Judge To Rule On JW Criminal

[Sprout (Zech. 6:12)]

Judge delays decision on sex offender's move

Merced County residents oppose the relocation.

A Contra Costa County judge will wait to decide whether a "sexually violent predator" now living in San Jose will relocate to Merced.

By Marc Benjamin
The Fresno Bee
(Updated Friday, July 2, 2004, 9:46 AM)

Judge John Minney's decision to issue a stay of his decision made last week occurred after pleas from Merced County residents and community leaders who said the judge's previous conclusion to move sexual offender Cary Verse to Merced should be re-examined.

His decision could be made as early as today, but Minney said it will certainly be made by 5 p.m. Tuesday. Another placement hearing for Verse is scheduled next Friday.

Verse did not attend because of transportation problems, said Lynda Frost, a state Department of Mental Health spokeswoman in San Jose. Her department is under a gag order by the judge, preventing staff members from speaking in detail about the issue. Agency contractor Liberty Healthcare, which also is under the order, is referring calls to the state Department of Mental Health.

Among those speaking in front of the judge Thursday was state Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Merced, who describes the state's sexually violent predator program as a shell game he calls "hide the predator." Merced County Sheriff Mark Pazin said the stress of the situation is beginning to show after neighbors of the South Highway 59 home exchanged heated words with representatives of Liberty Healthcare after Thursday's 75-minute hearing in Martinez.

Liberty Healthcare manages the sexually violent offender program for the state, overseeing three men, including Verse, who have been released since last year.

Pazin said several issues concern him, including the presence of an elementary school and preschool nearby. Neighbors did not learn the location of the home, a modest gray stucco house on South Highway 59, until Tuesday.

"On the state route that this sexually violent predator will live on, he will walk down that road to get into Merced for any of his needs," the sheriff said.

Pazin said the state and Liberty Healthcare jumped at the chance to relocate Verse to the Merced area after a San Jose man rented the house he owns there to Liberty.

"He has no job and no other visible means of support. The taxpayers are the ones that are propping him up," Pazin said of Verse.

The sheriff also is concerned that children visiting Verse's home selling candy or other salespeople could become his victims without setting off a Global Positioning System that Verse is ordered to have with him at all times.

Denham said he will propose changes to state law and contends the state may be violating its own policies about distances between where sexually violent predators live and schools.

He said a preschool is about that distance from the home. State law says that a person with sexual abuse charges involving a child younger than 14 years old cannot live within a quarter-mile of a school after being released from state custody. The youngest victims Verse was convicted of assaulting were 14.

Denham also said he will work to extend a 1998 law that required the state Department of Corrections to release inmates to the jurisdictions in which they were convicted to include the Department of Mental Health.

He said the Department of Mental Health was not included in the original legislation because the agency was not overseeing patient releases until last year.

"I will continue to work with the Governor's Office and attorney general to not only close this loophole, but to make sure Cary Verse is relocated out of Merced if he is placed there," Denham said.

Since his release in February, Verse has lived in a hotel in Mill Valley before being run out of town, a hotel and abbey in Oakland before being ordered to leave, and a hotel room in San Jose, where he has been the subject of a City Council resolution to move him out.

Verse, who attended Lemoore High School and ran track, said his days of sexual abuse ended 12 years ago with his last conviction. He decided to turn his life around after his brother was murdered in Georgia in 1993.

His treatment at the state hospital in Atascadero took six years. He also was in state prison six years before that.

Verse, who is chemically castrated and monitored through a Global Positioning System, has an 8 p.m. curfew, regular appointments with psychiatrists and psychologists, screening for arousal and polygraph testing. He also is ordered to write a journal of everything he does during the day and every person he talks to and meets.

Verse was convicted of sexual assault in Kings County as a juvenile. While in a juvenile camp for that crime, he escaped and sexually assaulted the person he escaped with.

When he was 19, he assaulted a 14-year-old on his bowling team in the Bay Area and served three years in state prison before his final conviction, when he was 21.

Verse, who describes himself as a devout Jehovah's Witness, said that in the state hospital he dealt with his demons as a childhood victim of sexual abuse and as an abuser.

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