The Monroe Monitor & Valley News, Monroe, Washington, The Voice of the Sky Valley Since 1899

Sex offender ordered to live under bridge

by POLLY KEARY, STAFF WRITER

A Level 3 sex offender who cut off his tracking bracelet and fled after being ordered to live under a bridge by community supervision officers was not the first to be given such an order, officials said last week. In fact, housing has become so difficult to find for such offenders that nearly half are released homeless.

“It happens,” said Dan Pacholke, interim superintendent of the Monroe Correctional Complex, Washington's largest prison. “There is a shortage of sex offender housing.”

State law prevents level-2 and -3 offenders from living within 800 feet of areas such as parks and playgrounds where children congregate. And some towns such as Issaquah and Monroe have yet more stringent buffer zone laws, rendering nearly the entire town off limits to such offenders. Many landlords and apartment managers will not rent to such an offender, and families often don’t want the offender back.

Of 39 level-3 sex offenders released in the first three months of this year, 15 were released without addresses, said Chad Lewis, spokesperson for the Department of Corrections in Olympia. But the Department of Corrections still needs to know where those offenders are at night while they complete community supervision. So offenders are sometimes ordered to spend the night in specific places out of doors.

“There has to be some designated spot so the officers know where to go for curfew checks,” Lewis said.

Corrections officials had tried to find a home for David Torrence for months prior to his release from prison, but were unsuccessful. Motels and shelters known to accommodate sex offenders refused to take Torrence, who was of the rarest and most dangerous kind of sex offender; a stranger rapist. In 1995, he grabbed a 16-year-old girl from an Everett street near Casino Road, forced her out of sight of the street, threatened to kill her and then raped her.

He was sentenced to more than seven years, served his time and was released, but went back to prison several times for failing to register as a sex offender, most recently serving a year. When his time was up, the prison had to let him go, said Lewis. So they gave him a sleeping bag and a rain poncho and told him to stay under the 88th street overpass over U.S. 2 between Monroe and Snohomish between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.

It was snowing the night he was dropped off at the bridge, said a relative who lives in Lynnwood. After three nights, Torrence cut off his tracking device and ran.

Putting a sex offender under a bridge is outrageous, said state representative Kirk Pearson (R-Monroe). "It is asinine,” he said. “It’s ridiculous, it’s a danger.”

The community was notified that Torrence was in the neighborhood of the bridge, but his exact location wasn’t given, Lewis said. But that’s not good enough, Pearson said. It is a sign that the whole system is in need of a fix. "I didn’t know it was this bad,” he said.”What really concerns me now, they estimate there are 1,400 homeless offenders state-wide.”

One thing the state should do is give more prison time to those who don't register as sex offenders on release, he said. "If you’re going to fail to register, go back to jail for a much longer time,” he said “We’re done with you.”

But already, many offenders are serving more time than the law demands when no release address can be found for them. Like most other offenders, sex offenders can earn time off their sentences for good behavior. But having an address is a condition of release. So often homeless offenders remain in prison until they have served the maximum sentence possible for their crime.

“There’s some people who would have gotten out earlier because of good behavior but we’ve held onto them,” said Lewis. “Obviously we don't want to release them homeless.”

Another solution might be temporary housing for just-released sex offenders, Pearson said. "We could look into a type of transitional housing where they are released,” he said. “There they could be monitored more. They have to prove themselves worthy to be back in society.”

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