CAPT Outreach magazine
September 1996

By Carol Wiesmann
Managing Editor

The CAPT Board of Directors is supporting a Manteca homeowner's association by drafting and pushing legislation to place greater restrictions on developmentally disabled sex offenders and the group homes where they are placed.

While CAPT is dedicated to the proper care and placement of the developmentally disabled, the union sees a need to ensure that sex offenders are placed in facilities that can care for them and keep them from harming others.

The primary purpose of the legislation is to protect people, but a side-effect will be to emphasize the need for Psych Techs and state facilities.

A bill already approved by the Legislature will make many changes in how mentally ill and developmentally disabled offenders are handled. The bill, AB 2104 by Assemblyman Mike Machado, is awaiting the Governor's signature. However, the Manteca bill will go further, addressing such issues as group home location, security, and registration and tracking of offenders.

The problem arises when a retarded person is accused of a sexual offense. Instead of being put on trial, the person is sent to DDS under Penal Code 1370 (incompetent to stand trial). After the person has spent six months in a developmental center, a determination is made whether the person is a threat.

If he isn't, the person goes back to court where the Penal Code designation is changed to Welfare and Institutions Code 6500, the law governing the commitment of developmentally disabled offenders.

Once a client picks up the W&I status, the reason why he was committed is not made public, as it is with sex offenders convicted under the Penal Code. He can be placed in a community group home without any notice to local law enforcement authorities. If the client does nothing wrong, he can then leave the group home after only six months.

What prompted the Manteca residents' concern is a group home located near a grammar school and park where many children play. The community's apprehension about the home heightened when accused child molester Earl McKinney walked away from the home in March and was at large for more than a day.

Although he was captured without incident, the residents fear for the children's safety if there should be another escape. Still fresh in their memories is last year's rape of a Manteca High School girl by a client who fled from Stockton DC.

The home on Trailwood Drive housed six developmentally disabled clients, including three registered sex offenders. McKinney and at least one other offender fell under the W&I Code so their offenses were not reported.

The home's backyard borders a community park. Like other homes around the park, it has a gate allowing access to swing sets, a children's pool and paved pathways where children walk to school. Across the street is another park, also with a swimming pool and pathways. The elementary school is less than a block from the group home.

When the Trailwood home was opened a few years ago, owner Dwight Thiel notified the homeowner's association. Ronald Robbins, a Manteca homeowner said Thiel told the association that the home would be for developmentally disabled clients who pose no danger to the community. The owner did not say sex offenders would be living there.

"It is against the law to sell drugs, alcohol or sexually explicit magazines, books or movies within 1,000 feet of a school, but it is not against the law to house known sex offenders in a house with minimal adult supervision less than one block from a grammar school and a block and a half from a high school," complains Robbins.

Concern for safety increased to the point of locking in students at the elementary school and instituting the buddy system when using restrooms. Crossing guards carry transceivers, and everyone entering or leaving the school grounds is screened.

"The wrong people are being subjected to lock-up, and our children have lost part of the innocence and simplicity of childhood," says Cindy Robertson, homeowner and parent. McKinney was charged in 1992 with child molestation and sent to Stockton DC, and was later moved to Napa State Hospital. He was placed in the Trailwood Drive home only days before he escaped, sending the community into a tailspin.

"We have been told that some of these sex offenders have been found incompetent to stand trial for their crimes," adds Robertson. "Pleaser help me understand why someone who is incompetent to be accountable for his criminal action can be accountable enough to live in an unsecured home?"

"If an individual is deemed dangerous to himself and others, why after two months at Napa State Hospital did someone decide to move him to a group home?" asks Robbins. And "if he's well enough to be weaned back to the community, then why shouldn't he go to the court for his case?"

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. The inappropriate placement of sexual offenders is occurring all over the state. Until the laws are amended, and downsizing of California's state facilities stop, these individuals will continue to be placed in unsafe, unsecured community facilities where innocent children will be at risk.