After 17 Years, 1st Sexual Predator to Graduate from Wash. Program
For the first time in its 17-year history, a Washington state treatment program for convicted sex offenders deemed to pose a serious risk of repeating their crimes if released is recommending the unconditional discharge of one of its patients.
Gary Cherry, 49, could be released as early as next month after eight years of treatment that is estimated to have cost the state more than $1 million, reports the Seattle Times. Like other convicted sex offenders at the Special Commitment Center at McNeil Island, he was sent there for treatment after serving his prison term, when he was determined to be a “sexually violent predator” likely to reoffend if released.
Two other patients have previously been discharged from the facility, but, unlike Cherry, they did not have the SCC’s agreement that they qualified for unconditional release, the newspaper says.
Although there is no guarantee that the SCC has successfully treated Cherry, who has been convicted of three stranger rapes and admitted a dozen others, an Olympia therapist who has worked with him for years says, as the Times explains it, that “sexual deviancy can be managed the same way an alcoholic abstains from booze.”
For about three years, Cherry has been on supervised release, living with his wife of more than 20 years and a teenage daughter and holding a job, although he has had to take an approved chaperone with him on most trips outside his home. Cherry says he plans to continue relying on his wife to help monitor his behavior once he is fully discharged.
Because Washington law allows the state to commit sex offenders only if they are considered more likely than not to reoffend, those, like Cherry, who are deemed to have less than a 50 percent chance of doing so must be released, says Henry Richards, the superintendent of SCC.
“The law requires release when there’s still significant risk,” he says. “They don’t require you to wait until the risk is minimal.”
