AZ: Elderly Child Molesters Pose Dilemma For Courts And Community

Source: arizonadailyindependent.com 6/18/22

Richard ___ was placed on intensive supervised probation last summer after pleading guilty in a Cochise County courtroom to felony sexual abuse of a teenaged boy who lived in Richard’s neighborhood. It was the latest in a string of sexual misconduct with children the now 85-year-old has engaged in dating back to the 1950s, according to court records.

 But Richard has been in the county jail since June 9 on a no-bail order at the request of his probation officer who alleges Richard recently committed three violations of probation. His next court date is a June 29 review hearing on a petition to revoke probation.

One alleged probation violation involves Richard ’s whereabouts being unknown on June 3 after he left his residence in Sierra Vista without the knowledge or preapproval of Bit’s supervision team. He is also accused of failing to abide by his approved weekly schedule back in April and driving to a Walmart earlier this month without approval of his team.

A petition to revoke probation typically comes with the strong likelihood of imprisonment for the underlying conviction. In Richard ’s case, that could result in a 2.5-year prison term.

But deciding what to do with Richard after his conviction last year was not easy for Judge Timothy Dickerson and probation officials due to the defendant’s age, medical condition, and obvious problems with impulse control.

And it is problem facing courts across Arizona, particularly in rural areas like Cochise County with very limited options for treatment and non-existent options for supervised residential placements which need to be more than 1,000 feet from a school or park.

Some elderly sex offender defendants in Arizona who have been sentenced to the Arizona Department of Corrections are transferred to a contractor who provides in-custody care under certain criteria. Another option has been to commit a defendant to the Arizona State Hospital.

Richard could also be reinstated to probation at the judge’s discretion. But what to do will not be made any easier for Dickerson given that Richard either will not or cannot abide by probation orders imposed by the judge and probation department to protect the community.

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Driving to Wal-Mart? Are you kidding me? So, the PO’s place ridiculous restrictions on a person then violate his parole. This just infuriates me to no end. I don’t know what to say really. If the man has a real impulse control problem, he should probably be committed. The issue then becomes that there is usually nowhere to commit a person with these charges. It’s like being in a maze that has nothing but dead ends and no exit! All the more reason to totally revise sex offender legislation to something that actually protects the offender and the community. Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of laws with no real teeth.

Assuming the facts are as reported (given the media’s tendency to exaggerate), this is exactly the type of person that the registry is supposed to protect the public from. Yet he purportedly accosted someone again, despite his status as a registrant for 20 years in the same location.

So what good did the registry do here? It didn’t even have anything to do with his identification and arrest – he was identified by his victim and his priors all came out afterward, as is always the case in the few-and-far-between registrant arrests for new crime.

So what in this case would have been different if there had been no registry at all? Other than the needless harassment of thousands of other registrants and families in the state that have and will never get arrested again for anything beyond registry violations.

I lived in that area briefly as a kid ( Willcox ) . South Eastern Arizona is about as close to being in Texas without actually being IN Texas. A lot of families are either military or generations of ranchers (read red neck conservatives). Not an accepting or tolerant area for parolees or ex felons. Of course people released from incarceration with lesser means don’t have many opportunities to live in areas that have services that could benefit them. One of the many paradoxes of the penal system.

I had a family member show me (because for some stupid reason we can’t access the sex offender registry ourselves) the “sex offenders” that live around us.

The first thing that came to my mind is that there are blue dots all over our neighborhood, which is a middle class to upper-middle-class neighborhood. The convalescent, nursing, and retirement homes by me tend to have multiple “sex offenders” that live in them, sometimes as much as four to five. (Keep in mind that these are only the ones listed, as there are many more people who are unlisted, for whatever reason, from the registry.)

One of the nursing homed “sex offender” is pictured as having an oxygen hookup to his nose, an 83 year old, who looked so frail, barely able to walk, and is pictured on what looked like his deathbed (the deputy/police officer obviously had to make a trip to the nursing home to take the picture).

That’s how big of a joke the sex offender registry is.

Unfortunately, guys like this make it difficult for the rest of us here in AZ. It sounds like he was on Intensive Probation, which requires you to submit a weekly schedule of where you’ll be at what time and how long, including drive time.
If he gets sent to DOC, that’s a guaranteed death sentence, because the health care there sucks. I know because I did 3 years in AZDOC and trying to get health care was a nightmare.

You know,

My older angry sister psychologically and physically assaulted me since I was a little child. My father condoned it, guising her blatantly contemptuous bullying behavior as some kind of ‘tough love’ coming from a “loving sister who didn’t intend to hurt but only wanted to teach [me] to be good”.

I suffered academically in school mainly because of the dire stress put on me in my home environment, which was mainly owed to her; just so that she (older bullying sister) could be given the privilege to “be really worried” about my academic progress; and for her to gain cheap praises for being a ‘good older sister for being worried’.

Even when she’s wrong, my father made her ‘right’. And, when it outright couldn’t be proven any other way but that she was in the wrong, he would attempt to elude having to admonish her.

And, then, there was the bit of sexual abuse as well. She would march into the bathroom while I was taking a shower, only to bark at me about some random inconsequential fault I may or may not have owned during the day; screaming at me in full sight of me in the shower. (I couldn’t have locked the door when I used the bathroom, as she would be extremely angry if I did. As a child, I was conditioned to accept this.) She would even occasionally demand that I let her see the toilet after my usage; to assess whether I was “telling the truth” (about my usage).

Obviously, I felt violated by her vulgar, disgusting, brutish behavior.

This was my older sister.

When outside people observed in, it was easy for my dad to present the situation as a “loving sister” who “yeah, maybe got a little too rough but ultimate had good, loving intentions”. My father knew how to talk, and my sister was charmingly charismatic in the public’s face. This rendered me voiceless, powerless, and invisible.

Adding a slap-in-the-face insult to injury, today, she and her favoritistically-spoiled, privileged behind went on to being a doctor.

I was her (and my biological family’s) emotional dumping ground; as I hope I was able to portray.

Something like what my older sister did to me should absolutely be a crime to be legally punished. It would soothe my heart if it was.

Sadly, it isn’t. And, unless I’m mistaken, no lawmaker would truly care to make what my sister did a crime.

~~~~~~~~

I don’t understand how passing by Walmart would warrant 2 1/2 years of incarceration for defying some small, insignificant term of probation, and neither do I know what “felony sexual abuse of a teenage boy”*** actually encompassed. Meanwhile, I would never receive closure for the decade-plus of the psychological abuse I suffered as a child; an abuse which continues to live on during my adulthood.

Is the American legal system always about helping victims, or is it sometimes merely obsessed with merely presenting a good face for public favors?

***(Was Richard ____ violently raping the poor boy, or was it mere inappropriate sexual touching? Many state’s don’t distinguish between the two.)

Last edited 2 years ago by AC

Well we all know how much we can trust petty prole . Its chicken shit how it can be almost impossible some agents can make it , and how much they lie . just because some old man might make them have to get off their over paid ass and do their job, rather than handing a crap load of paper loaded with ways to trick bag some old man back into the prison, for some way over paid unit , That is the crime ! then snivel about what they don’t have , as they maintain the unconstitutional registry and pay them , rather than help people get stable when getting out of prison . these control freaks are part of the very crime they say they are trying to stop , (From the top down) another thing is then they were talking about the victim being a teen age Boy , and I thought about when I was 14 I was bench pressing 300LBs and working a part time job after school as well as chores at home on the farm , building my first road bike and my first car that I starting driving to school when I turn 16 , so kind of hard to believe that this old beat up old man forced some teen boy , so why would this old man be on some crazy watch list and register ? you mean the registry don’t make everyone safe? anyone that has been on prole as a FTR know the deck is stacked , prison as well is many as times hard , seems like the harder you try the harder the so called (Good guys) push , in the mean time finding a place to live and a job are a threat of having to go back to prison. many with PTSD from prion , holding your freedom over your head for (LIFE) don’t believe me refuse to register just like you can do with your car and watch , it will be the ftr that they come after you for , sounds like further punishment to me , this needs to be readdress’s like MI , I hope people in my stop registering in MI and lawsuit their states ass if jailed , anyway I wish the old guy in AZ all the luck in the world and hope he finds some peace in life , screw AZ has always been a sick LE state