Sex-offender label on boys unravels family's lives

djennings@dallasnews.com

Sex-offender label on boys unravels family's lives

10:23 AM CDT on Sunday, July 19, 2009

By DIANE JENNINGS / The Dallas Morning News

djennings@dallasnews.com

In 1998, 7-year-old Mary was sexually assaulted.

That's enough sorrow for a lifetime.

It gets worse: Her assailants were her brothers, Billy, 12, and Mark, 10.

Their mother, Carol, says watching her adolescent sons shuffle into court – in handcuffs and oversized orange jail jumpsuits rolled up to fit their scrawny frames – for assaulting their sister "just tore my heart out."

But the horror was only beginning.

Following the juvenile justice philosophy that children deserve a second chance, the boys received probation, and their delinquency records remained private. But ostensibly to protect the public, their names were added to the sex offender registry.

The Smith sons, now in their 20s, are due to be removed from the registry next year after the 10-year juvenile registration limitation expires. But Carol says the family will never recover from the boys being branded as sex offenders.

"Even though they were 10 and 12 when this happened ... they'll be sex offenders when they die," she says.

The Smith family – whose names have been changed to protect Mary's privacy – is not unique. According to a Dallas Morning News analysis, about 4,000 people are on the Texas sex offender registry for crimes committed as juveniles. About a thousand of them were younger than 14 at the time of their crimes.

It's her label, too.

Mary is 19 years old now, thin, pale and soft-spoken. She forgave her brothers long ago.

But she's never been able to put the matter behind her, primarily because of her brothers' registration. "It's always in the back of my mind," she says. "You know, not so much what happened, but [it's] who we are now."

Though she was never identified publicly as the victim, she suspects people know. Her brothers' registration information includes their address and the victim's age and gender. Even if the people in her North Texas town don't know she was the victim, she's recognized as the sibling of sex offenders.

"They see the word 'sex offender' and they automatically see it as some horrible monster that took some little girl out somewhere and raped her," she says. "Nobody really cares what the story is."

The case file is sealed, and attorneys and others involved in the matter would not discuss it, but court papers provided by the brothers' father, Bob, describe the story clinically: Billy penetrated Mary and had her perform oral sex. No violence was involved, but because of her age the crime is aggravated sexual assault.

Mark later touched her genitals and was charged with indecency with a child.

Sex offender treatment providers say penetration by young children is unusual, but looking and touching is fairly common, falling within the range of "normal development."

Their parents, while not playing down the seriousness of the offenses, say the boys learned the behavior from adults.

"A kid came over and spent the night with Billy and brought with him a porno tape from his dad," Carol says. "That's where they got these ideas from."

Billy declined to talk for this story, but Mark says they also witnessed sexual activity between a teenage baby sitter and her boyfriend. Both boys were diagnosed with learning disabilities from an early age, and Billy was treated for emotional problems in kindergarten.

The Smiths admit their family isn't suited for a Norman Rockwell painting. Bob's trucking job took him away for long stretches of time. Carol worked at the post office and made extra money cleaning houses. The kids were often left with the sitter.

"We may not have been the perfect people, but we both tried," Bob says.

Mark doesn't blame his parents. "They did the best they could," he says.

Both parents say they don't know how long the behavior went on, but after Carol walked in on Billy and Mary in the bathroom one day, she and Bob "told him this is not acceptable, this is not the way people conduct themselves."

They also told Mary not to let anyone touch her that way.

Carol sought help, unaware the therapist was required to report the incident. When authorities interviewed Mary, she told them about Billy and about when Mark touched her.

Mark says Billy encouraged him to touch their sister, and their parents say Billy did so because he didn't want to be in trouble by himself.

Billy and Mark pleaded guilty and received two years' probation. Mark went to live with a foster family from Carol's church; Billy was sent to a residential treatment center.

Carol expected the kids to get help "and we could go back to being the family we were," she says.

4 feet 7, 80 pounds

But to the Smiths' horror, the boys' names, descriptions and crime soon cropped up on the Internet. Bob shuffles through a stack of papers and pulls out a copy of Mark's early state sex offender registration: white male, 4 feet 7, 80 pounds, size 6 shoe.

The family knew the boys would be registered with law enforcement authorities – Mark's acknowledgement was printed with childlike letters, signed in careful cursive – but didn't realize the information would be listed on the public sex offender registry.

Juvenile registration was not mandatory at the time but was left to judicial discretion as it is today. Court records do not show whether a judge specifically ordered public registration, and the Smiths are puzzled about why their sons, who received light sentences and eventually were sent home to live with their victim, were listed.

The Smiths say they favor public registration for sexually violent criminals, and maybe for repeat juvenile offenders, but "you don't need to protect the community from an 11-year-old kid," Mark says.

Carol says: "This was a horrible thing that happened, but ... they are not these horrible animals."

Registration "ruined both their lives," she says softly. "It totally ruined them."
When they returned to school, the principal vowed to keep a close eye on the boys; teachers asked if they were dangerous; fellow students quickly learned about the crime.

Attending church camp was nixed. Sleepovers became a thing of the past. After an old friend's mother saw Mark on the Internet, "He was not allowed to associate with that child," Carol says.

Both boys gravitated toward young thieves and junkies, Bob says, "because they're the only people that would accept [them]." Neither son dated much. When Carol asked Mark why he didn't ask a girl he liked to go out, he replied, "I can't ask her out, Mom, I'm a sex offender."

Mark says his life spiraled out of control after his arrest.

"Once I was in jail when I was 10, that made me accept that jail was OK," he says. "It exposed me to drugs. It made me accept a world I never would have accepted." Mary also struggled. At school, she says, her teachers told her that they knew her brothers and warned her not to be a troublemaker like them.

And, she added, "it was hard making friends."

Mary "continued really to be a victim," Bob says. "She couldn't live a normal life.
"We were scared to death if some girl came to the house and they were here and their parents knew."

At a counselor's suggestion, alarms were installed on Mary's bedroom door when the boys returned home. "I was OK with that," Carol says, "because I want Mary to be safe, too."

Being the parents of both the victim and the perpetrators is like "being pulled apart," Carol says. "Because if you take up for your boys, then they're thinking, 'What about your daughter? Don't you care about her?' And if you take up for your daughter, it's, 'What about the boys?' "

Her dream of a normal family life vanished "as soon as I knew it was on the Internet," she says. "Our family was looked at as a family of degenerates."
'Tremedous strain'

The Smiths' marriage was already on shaky ground, and the situation with their children made it worse.

"It caused tremendous strain," Carol says, and for a long time the couple blamed each other for what happened. "We don't feel that way now," she says.

Carol particularly had a difficult time dealing with the situation. She quit going to church after a deacon asked her, in crude terms, exactly what happened. And she began abusing methamphetamines.

"I can't deal with it," Carol says of her sons' status. "The way I've dealt with it is to not think about it."

She and Bob divorced in 2004.

All three kids dropped out of high school. Mary works at a fast-food restaurant, and Billy, who earned a GED certificate, recently landed a construction job. But employers willing to hire poorly educated teen sex offenders in a town of 25,000 are rare.

Bob considered sending his sons to live with relatives who were willing to give them jobs. But "nobody wanted their address" on the sex offender registry, he says.

Under one roof

Today, Billy, Mark and Mary call Bob's small rental house home. He's grateful his landlord has not objected to having sex offenders on the property, but others have not been so welcoming.

Bob points to a jagged hole in the siding where a passer-by shot a pellet gun, then ticks off the other incidents: two broken car windshields; a Molotov cocktail thrown in the driveway; a neighbor who complained about the boys visiting a nearby park; talk of forming a neighborhood group to keep an eye on the Smiths' sons.

Bob admits he has not always turned the other cheek. In 2002, he received deferred adjudication for a misdemeanor assault he says sprang from escalating tensions with a neighbor.

Ironically, Bob says, when irate people target his house, they're also victimizing his daughter again.

"I really didn't have much of a childhood at home," Mary says. "I kept to myself most of the time because I was afraid."

In and out of jail

Neither Smith boy has committed another sex offense. But they haven't stayed out of trouble either.

Both have been in and out of prison for crimes such as burglary. Billy also spent a year behind bars for failing to register as a sex offender.

"He didn't want to create problems for me and his sister," Bob says. "He didn't want his face in the newspaper. He had just made new friends – he was a teenager."
Even though juvenile registrations are capped at 10 years, the conviction for failing to register "is going to be on his record the rest of his life," Bob says.
What bothers Carol is that her boys accept prison life as normal.

"Billy's all but institutionalized," Carol says. "He sees no point in trying, because he's branded."

The last time Billy got in trouble, Bob asked him, "Why? Why did you do this?"
"What else do I got to do?" Billy replied. "At least if I'm in prison, I can crawl into my little hole. I don't have to deal with anybody on the outside."
Mark is currently in the local jail for using heroin in violation of his latest probation.

He doesn't seem particularly bothered by the prospect of spending a couple of years behind bars. "I don't have to deal with it in here," he says. "Nobody really knows."

By the time he is released, his registration period will have expired, and he hopes to find a job and a place to live without worrying about a sex crime appearing on his record.

"When I get out, it'll be a clean slate," he says hopefully.

He is less optimistic about his brother's chances.

"He may have taken it worse than anyone else," Mark says. "He's shy; he's never had friends.

"Me and my sister, we can get past this, but I don't think my brother ever will."

The rest of the family also continues to suffer.

Bob recently applied for a part-time job as a security guard. After a background check, he was asked, "Who's the sex offender?" at his home. He explained the situation and never heard back from the company.

At 56, on disability because of two bouts with cancer and other health problems, he longs to leave Texas. But he's trapped, he says, because his sons would have no place to live.

"If I take off, if I bail out, then I'm stuffing it all on her," Bob says of his ex-wife. "I don't want to do that."

If Billy and Mark were simply thugs, "I would have said, 'Boys, I'm leaving. Y'all want to be crooks and thieves all your lives, fine,' " Bob says. "But because of the registration thing, that I feel deeply in my heart had such negative impact on their lives ... I don't have a choice."

The rest of the world may have given up on the Smith brothers, but their victim hasn't.

People can't understand "why we were still there for them if they were such awful people," Mary says. "But I'm not going to do that. I'm never going toabandon them."

Dallas Morning News researchers Darlean Spangenberger and Molly Motley Blythe contributed to this story.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/
stories/DN-familyruins_19met.ART.State.Edition2.4b923c2.html

Emphasis added by H4K Editor

Child Protective Services in Bexar County, San Antonio, Texas, is out of control.

On May 29, 2009 – just as Tiffany Denson, CASA, told Kristopherson on May 14th, Judge Montemayor approved CPS taking Kristopherson into custody due to one missed therapy appointment in March! The ADA said, this child needs to be removed immediately and it is a matter of life and death, i.e.: Imminent Danger... of what? Of not seeing a therapist in March!? What is “imminent” about a concern made on May 14th, but not acted on until May 29th?

An 11 year-old boy, Kristopherson, returned home on March 5, 2009. –
Initially, becoming accustomed to being at home with different rules, and new schools, while his siblings were still in foster care, was rocky but he began to acclimate.

The first therapist approved by CPS, became ill and was hospitalized. Because Mom knew Kristopherson would need extra help when he first returned, Vanessa Carillo, caseworker, approved a couple of sessions with the family therapist. After a couple of weeks, March/April, his Mother was told to take him to see Arden Prior, a therapist.

Appointments were made, and an error in scheduling forced Mom to call and reschedule the therapy appointment. On the date of the rescheduled appointment, the Medicaid bus ran one hour late (a common issue for people with disabilities who have to use these buses for transportation, and easy to prove). Mom called Ms. Prior to let her know what the problem was. The Medicaid bus showed up one hour late, and Mom and son went to the office to see if the therapist was available. Arden Prior was gone.

Mom called Arden Prior numerous times and not receiving a return call, Mom contacted Vanessa Carillo, the caseworker. When Vanessa called Mom, she informed Mom that Arden Prior had fired Kristopherson as a client.

Isn’t there a requirement for therapists to inform parents who are court ordered to see her, when she fires them as a client? Are parents expected to read minds, or is this a way to make certain that clients fail to meet court orders? If you have encountered therapist Arden Prior, we would like to know about your experience.

Fortunately, Mom was referred to a much better therapist, who was able to meet Kristopherson’s needs, and they were beginning to establish a relationship; a child / therapist relationship. The last therapy appointment with Kristopherson was on May 20th, only NINE days before Tiffany Denson testified that the agency needed to remove Kristopherson immediately.

On May 14, the CASA worker, Tiffany Denson, appeared at the door and wanted to speak with Kristopherson. Mom informed Tiffany Denson that Kristopherson was home from school, running a fever, with the flu, and asked her to come another time. Tiffany appeared not to care about Kristopherson being sick as she went into the house, and tried to make this sick child talk to her.

On May 29, Tiffany Denson testified that the child was shut down, not communicative, and in serious danger.

Tiffany Denson testified that Mom is making the children hate her, the caseworkers, and their attorney, Elana Pearsol. Tiffany has no proof of this, but in family law courts, proof is not necessary.

Surely, the children's hatred for these people has nothing to do with them showing up at the kid’s schools at any time or day, and putting them into foster care! It works better to blame the Mother for everything that goes wrong with the children, in and out of foster care.


Although Kristopherson’s therapist disagreed with CPS’ decision to remove Kristopherson from his home, on May 29, the ADA in Judge Montemayor’s court stated 12 year-old Kristopherson needed to be removed from his home immediately. He was in Imminent Danger of Harm!

This Mother has never, NOT ONCE, had her children out of school without cause, the children have always had the clothes and food needed, and Mom has never allowed her child to walk around with a broken hand for three weeks; foster care does, but not this Mother! Although CPS has been involved in destroying the life of this family since September 8, 2004, not once has Mom been accused of abuse.

On May 29, 2009 – just as Tiffany Denson had told Kristopherson on May 14th, Judge Montemayor approved CPS taking Kristopherson into custody! The ADA said, this child needs to be removed immediately and it is a matter of life and death, i.e.: Imminent Danger... of what? Of not seeing a therapist in March!?

What is “imminent” about a concern made on May 14th, but not acted on until May 29th?

Oh surely there has to be more to this story... but, sadly enough, there is not more to the story!

On May 29, 2009, Kristopherson was taken from his school, and place in foster care because he missed one therapy appointment in March. Although Judge Montemayor stated he had previously ordered a zero tolerance for missed appointments, the records do not reflect this statement.

One judge in the District Courts in San Antonio stated, "We do not do crazy here." We need this judge to check in on Montemayor's court, and watch the crazies have a feeding frenzy.

In his own words, this child who has never been allowed to attend a court hearing, in violation of CPS Policy, wrote this letter to Judge Montemayor and Judge Sakai, word-for-word.

Dear Judge Guy or Girl,

Please let me go home because if you do I will be very, very, good and I will NOT get in ANY trouble at all guaranteed. You will definitely not regret it and no one can be a better parent and guardian than my mom and dad, and CPS keeps putting us places they know nothing about and it is totally ridiculous and stupid. So, that is the first reason we should go home.

Here is a list of reasons for letting us go home.

List of Reasons we should be let go home:

1. CPS keeps putting us places they know nothing about
2. No one knows us better than my mom
3. No one does a better job of parenting than my mom and dad
4. My mom is always there for me
5. My mom and dad are very responsible
6. Jesus made my family just for me
7. Families are supposed to stay together until death do they part
8. CPS is irresponsible
9. CPS is cruel
10. CPS does not care about us
11. CPS acts worried but really isn’t
12. CPS isn’t smart

Sincerely,

Child in Texas Residential state foster care

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Notice how the Child assumes he is in foster care because he is BAD.
The reason he believes he is a bad child is because he is repeatedly told he IS a BAD CHILD, by foster caregivers, caseworkers, and his own attorney is convinced he is just a BAD kid!~
-- Who is Elana Pearsol working for?
-- She has convicted her own client and resolved to create a “throw-away” child.
-- Caseworker and child’s attorney, Elana Pearsol, have said he is a lost cause.
-- This child’s mother is not going to go away!!
-- CPS in San Antonio has been trying to dismiss the mother since 2004, but this is a real Mother and she is not going to go away!

Recently, this child was restrained, face down (prone)in a fire-ant bed by staff at Five Oaks Achievement Center in Texas!

Judge Charles Montemayor

Children's Court, Rm. 306, 3rd Floor

Bexar County Courthouse

100 Dolorosa

San Antonio, Texas 78205




He is not receiving services and CPS is in violation of the American’s with Disabilities Act (ADA), FAPE, IDEA, No Child Left Behind, and numerous other policies of the Texas Education Association, Office of Civil Rights.

Children's Rights

Texas Administrative Code (TAC), Chapter 40, Part 19, Subchapter H Child Rights

Who has the most magnificent penis?

Which is worse:

1. A ten year-old child is alleged to have shown his magnificent penis to a female child.

or

2. A 62 year old, former police officer, and instructor in criminal justice, cons a 17 year-old student to come to class during the holidays, puts his hands all over her body, tells her what he wants to do, sends repeated and inappropriate text messages, and posts on her myspace.

San Antonio charged the Ten Year Old child with felony sexual touching of a child under age 17. Does this make sense when both children are under age 10? He was locked into Juvie Detention for over nine months (children do not get time served) and has been placed in a facility for sexual offenders!!

New Braunfels charged the 62 year old, former police officer, with a Class C Misdemeanor!!


By Roger Croteau - Express-News

New Braunfels, Texas Teacher charged with Class C Misdemeanor for Sexual Assault of Student

Affidavit: N.B. teacher's advances were sexual

"[..]Police took photos of the text messages and MySpace message after the girl reported it.

The officer who did the initial investigation labeled it an improper relationship between educator-student, a second-degree felony. But the detective who obtained the warrant wrote that the facts did not satisfy the elements of that charge and filed the misdemeanor assault charge.

Trollinger was a peace officer before becoming a teacher. He left the Comal County Sheriff's Department in 1992 with the rank of lieutenant, a department spokesman said. [..]

On Monday, students were sent home with letters from the principal to their parents, notifying them that a teacher had been charged with assault by contact, a Class C misdemeanor, in an incident involving a student."


------------------------------------------------

Would someone please explain how a 13 year old child, who is in state foster care is charged with a Class C Misdemeanor for cursing at another student.

Does this equate with a 62 year old teacher (who knows better) of criminal justice makes sexual advances toward a student in repeated text messages, inappropriate messages on the teen's myspace, and inappropriate sexual advances on school property, during the holidays?

When a 10 year old male showed his magnificent penis to another child, who asked to see it, he was charged with First Degree Felony sexual assault of a child under age 17; he was TEN years old! This same child has major disabilities, rooted in lead poisoning from 18 months of age, and he was railroaded into signing a plea agreement in Judge Laura Parker's court. The child cannot read nor does he understand what the plea was about but Attorney Ramond Deleon had already tried and convicted his young client.

Afterward the child was crying, "I thought those papers meant I could go home." After spending over nine months in San Antonio Juvenile Detention, this child was ready to sign about anything.

This is a disgrace!!