The release of a sexually violent offender into a community following an involuntary hospital confinement after he served his prison sentence can be blocked by setting up the home schooling of children within close proximity to where the former inmate is scheduled to reside, the Sixth District Court of Appeal has declared, over a dissent.
At issue is Welfare & Institutions Code §6608.5(f) which provides that “a person released under this section shall not be placed within one-quarter mile of any public or private school providing instruction in kindergarten or any of grades 1 to 12, inclusive” if either of two conditions exist, one of which is “that the person has a history of improper sexual conduct with children.”
Michael Thomas Cheek had such a history. In 1981, he raped a 15-year-old girl after he escaped from prison where he was sent after committing kidnapping, rape, and forcible oral copulation in 1980.
Santa Cruz Superior Court Judge Syda K. Cogliati on Nov. 15, 2021, approved the release of Cheek to a residence in Bonny Doon, located about 10 miles north of the City of Santa Cruz, spurning the protest of the Bonny Doon School District. An elementary school is in the vicinity of where Cheek would reside, but it is about one mile away.
Matter of Timing
Cogliati rejected the contention that the release must be blocked in light of the home-schooling within a quarter of a mile of the proposed residence, as shown by affidavits, because, he pointed out, it was established after a statutorily required notice of the proposed release was sent to local residents.
The Sixth District on Friday ordered issuance of peremptory writ of mandate requiring that Cheek not be released, as planned. Justice Adrienne Grover said, in an opinion joined in by Presiding Justice Mary J. Greenwood:
“[T]he statute prohibiting placement of certain sexually violent predators near a school does not require the school to have been operating for any particular time. Nor does the statute contain any language preventing its application to schools operating in a home.”
She elaborated that there is nothing in the language of the statute “that can be construed to require that the school be planned or in existence before notice of an offender’s placement,” adding:
“The Legislature could have prescribed that a school exist at the time notice of placement is given to the community, but it did not. We have no authority to insert that requirement ourselves. Imposing a specific requirement not found in the text goes beyond interpreting the statute. It would amount to rewriting it, which we cannot do.”
This is really opening a Pandora’s Box in terms of calculating distance from a place of schooling. Now, anyone can claim they are home-schooling their children to block someone’s release back into society. How can this person prove he’s eligible for residency there when this overprotective parent ends the ‘home-schooling ruse’?
This is just dumb. What the hell is the difference between a kid living at the residence and living there while being educated? What does it matter if they’re homeschooled? How’s that any different if a child is home confined due to perpetual illness? Does them being “educated” somehow changes the exact same parameters? This is seriously right along the same lines of arbitrarily establishing a “park” by planting one tree and placing a chair on a 4×4 piece of land.
Reading that article, it seems as though the courts inserted themselves into this case rather than interpret the law(s) as stated.
It appears the law is going back on its words. This should be appealed.
I love watching California law-enforcement agencies struggle trying to find housing for sexually violent predators, California created this mess in the first place, back in the early 2000s when the Internet came out.
California sex offender laws were so strict that sex offenders started fleeing to other state’s where restrictions weren’t as harsh, alot of people fled to US territories which triggered the birth of SORNA and the interest in our passports.
So in order to keep Sex offenders out States started creating registry restrictions 10 times harsher then their neighboring state, which eventually caused a chain reaction and now practically the whole United States of America is is off-limits to PFR it’s sad really.
wonder if that home is properly zoned and permited to be a school instead of a home as the court called it a school that is in a home!
Is it not HIS community, too?
Does he not only pay taxes, but the taxes on local schools he’s not even allowed to set foot on?
The SOR is the most misguided, selfish and dysfunctional law ever devised.
I’m in Louisiana and a few years ago a state legislator proposed a bill that would prohibit registered persons from living, or even being in the presence of, a certain distance from any homeschool. I contacted him anonymously, told him I was a registered citizen, and asked him how & when the address of every homeschooler in the state would be made available to every RSO in the state. Then I contacted a statewide homeschooler organization and asked them if they were aware that this bill would make the address of every homeschooler in the state available to every sex offender in the state.
The bill was pulled less than a week later.
I wonder what would happen if every RSO in California contacted the sheriff’s dept and asked to be provided a list of the addresses of every homeschooler. After all, you can’t stay away from a place unless you are made aware of where that place is.
Also, how do homeschool parents feel knowing that their address is now provided to RSOs.
Sometimes, the best way to fight an absurdity is be being absurd
Board of Supervisors vote unanimously to support home-school sites in placement restrictions of sex predators