http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article/article?f=/c/a/2005/02/05/BAGDGB6KKF1.DTL
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article/article?f=/c/a/2005/02/05/BAGDGB6KKF1.DTL
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MARTINEZ
Judge delays deciding if sex offender can move
Verse tells crowd at public hearing he's also been abused
Cecilia M. Vega, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, February 5, 2005
Cary Verse faced a roomful of angry detractors Friday who do not want the five-time convicted sex offender to move to east Contra Costa County and said he is a changed man who is "not a danger to anyone's children or their family."
The emotional and sometimes raucous three-hour public hearing in a jury room at the Martinez courthouse ended with Verse's telling the crowd that he, too, had been a victim of molestation and was looking for a new start.
"I was sexually assaulted, and I thought that's what you did to other people. ... It's just a negative cycle," he told the crowd of about 100 people, many of whom spoke at the hearing.
Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge John Minney was expected to decide Friday whether to allow Verse to move from San Jose to Bay Point, but he delayed the decision to study the dozens of remarks made by residents and lawyers.
Minney said he would issue a written decision soon.
Verse has tried to make a home in Mill Valley, Oakland and San Jose since his release from Atascadero State Hospital a year ago as the second graduate of the state's violent sex predator program, but his presence was always greeted with protests from residents.
He could end up in Bay Point, where a couple have offered to rent him a cottage behind their law firm, because a new state law requires that sexually violent predators who have completed mental treatment return to the county where they lived before confinement.
Verse committed his last sexual assault in Richmond in 1992 on a 22-year- old homeless man who was living in the same shelter as him.
Pittsburg and Bay Point residents Friday protested Verse's potential move to their neighborhood and instead suggested he be moved to Richmond, to a field or even a deserted island.
"It's absurd that he's been run out of every other community," said George Robles, whose daughter attends a grammar school blocks away from where Verse may live. "What makes our community any different?"
Many came armed with statistics about how many sex offenders already lived in their area. Others had calculated exactly how many minutes it takes to walk from Verse's potential home to the nearby school in hopes of persuading the judge not to move him there.
"I don't want my child or anyone else to be his next victim when he relapses," said Pittsburg resident Marissa Angeles.
Hoping to allay any possible misconceptions about Verse's criminal history, Contra Costa Deputy District Attorney Brian Haynes presented Verse's record to the crowd.
In addition to attacking the homeless man, at age 17 Verse assaulted a 14- year-old male teammate on his high school track team, and between the ages of 18 and 21, he assaulted three teenage boys.
Verse knew, at least casually, all of his victims prior to the assaults and has an attraction to forced sex, Haynes said.
"Mr. Verse has never been diagnosed by any health professional as a pedophile," said Haynes, who also urged the state Department of Mental Health to continue searching for a "less urbanized" location to move Verse.
But Deputy Attorney General Susan King, who is representing the department, said there might be no choice other than Bay Point.
"No one with the county has come forward with a suggestion for any other housing for Mr. Verse that might be appropriate," King said.
Verse, who will live in a San Jose motel until Minney decides where to place him, has been chemically castrated and carries a satellite monitoring system.
Throughout the hearing, Verse sat quietly next to his attorney with a Bible on the table in front of him.
A Jehovah's Witness, he told the crowd that he had been raised in a "Christian military family" and never told anyone he had been molested at age 6 and then raped by peers at 14 until later in life.
Verse said no one has the right to be hurt.
"I've been on both sides of abuse," he said.
E-mail Cecilia M. Vega at [email protected].