Grandfather looks after grandson, a sex offender - msnbc.com

By BY CHRISTINE CLARRIDGE
The Seattle Times

SEATTLE (AP) - R.L. Medina could be on a golf course, on a cruise, or visiting relatives in the Midwest.

The 77-year-old retired in 1995 after four years in the Air Force, a job at Boeing and decades working at an industrial hydraulics plant in South King County. By any measure, he's earned the right to relax a little.

But Medina is afraid to relax, to let his guard down, even momentarily. If he does, he fears his grandson will wind up back in jail, something Medina's convinced will do "the kid" no good at all.

His grandson, Leon Medina, is 32 years old, homeless, unemployed and mentally ill. Leon believes he came from another planet and spends most of his time taking things apart and building spaceshiplike models with intricate, movable parts.

Leon is also a Level III sex offender.

Medina says his grandson has to be watched carefully, but not because he's likely to commit another sexual offense. He says Leon's mental and developmental limitations make it exceedingly difficult for him to adhere to his stringent probation requirements.

With no other family members willing or able to step up, much of the work involved in keeping Leon out of trouble has fallen to Medina.

"It's like taking care of a 7-year-old," Medina says.

In fact, finding a permanent place for Leon to live has been so exceedingly difficult that most days Medina makes the 80-mile round trip from his South King County home to the shelters in Seattle where his grandson spends his nights.

Medina's daily routine often involves taking Leon out to eat and to the library. Sometimes they go to a mall, where Medina walks for exercise, and Leon visits "gadget" stores.

Other times, Medina takes Leon shopping for groceries, shoes and clothes. If Leon needs to do laundry or visit a dentist, it's his grandfather who takes him.

Medina recently enrolled Leon in a mental-health clinical trial on the Eastside. He picks up his grandson, drives him there and then sits for hours in the waiting room.

Then there are the weekly trips to the state Department of Corrections (DOC) probation office in Seattle and the King County Sheriff's Office, where Leon is required to register as a sex offender.

The weekly check-ins are required of Level III sex offenders.

"The law is not fair," Medina said. "He doesn't understand what's happening. He can't find a place to live or get a job because of that damned label: sex offender."

When Leon was in his early 20s, before he was a sex offender, he had earned his GED from Green River Community College and was holding down a steady job assembling airplane parts in Kent.

According to court documents, Leon was 23 when he began dating a girl he had met online in the spring of 2002. She was 14.

She broke up with Leon after a few months, but he made a nuisance of himself while trying to track her down to give her a bracelet and the mother of 1 of the girl's friends reported him to police for telephone harassment.

When police investigated, Leon told officers that the couple had had a sexual relationship. Because the girl was underage, Leon was charged with two counts of third-degree rape of a child.

Leon was sent to Western State Hospital for three months and diagnosed with an adjustment disorder, schizophrenia and "schizoid personality disorder," but he was found competent to stand trial, according to court documents.

In a presentencing report, a probation officer wrote that Leon refused to acknowledge wrongdoing, claimed the girl had initiated the sexual relationship and "raped" him and that he wasn't able to distinguish between teens and young adults.

"I can't tell the difference," he told the probation officer, according to the presentencing report.

He pleaded guilty to the charges in 2003 and was sentenced to three years in prison. He served 18 months.

When he got out in 2004, he was under the supervision of a community corrections officer and ordered to register as a Level II sex offender, based in part on his unwillingness to participate in sex-offender therapy.

He initially lived at his mother's Auburn home, but his mother asked him to leave when she decided to become a licensed child-care provider.

At the end of 2004 he was living with other relatives, but had not notified the Sheriff's Office of his address change and, additionally, had missed several check-ins with his community-corrections officer.

He was arrested on a warrant for a probation violation and convicted of failing to register as a sex offender.

Last year, he was convicted of failing to register again. His probation officer told him that one more violation could mean an automatic prison term.

That's when his grandfather decided to step in.

Dan Weiss, a community-corrections officer in the DOC's special-needs unit for mentally ill offenders, said Leon was upgraded from a Level II to a Level III sex offender because he is homeless.

If he is able to find a permanent place to live, his parole officer said, his offender level will be reduced and he will be released from the requirement to register weekly.

Which will be a boon to both Leon and his grandfather.

"It's obvious he loves his grandson and is looking out for his well being," Weiss said of Medina. "(Leon) is a very impaired individual and his grandfather is correct that if he wasn't picking him up and taking him to the Sheriff's Office, I doubt he would register."

While there is a subcategory of sex offenders that are violent, predatory, serial offenders - the ones most likely to make headlines - they are not in the majority, according to DOC spokesman Chad Lewis.

In fact, contrary to popular belief, sex offenders as a whole are the second least-likely criminals to reoffend, according to the Washington State Institute for Public Policy.

DOC Assistant Secretary Anmarie Aylward said that statistically, perpetrators of sexual assaults that occurred within what they believed was a consensual relationship are among the least likely to reoffend.

But the issue is a sensitive topic with the public and with politicians.

She said that recent efforts by some legislators to require less DOC supervision for sex offenders deemed least likely to re-offend have failed to gain political traction.

"The truth is that there are people who don't need to be supervised as closely as others, but you can never talk about it," Aylward said. "Nobody wants to let a sex offender go and have them go out and do something heinous."

Medina is desperately trying to find a clean and safe place for his grandson to live. It's hard, though.

Leon is banned from group homes for people with developmental disabilities or mental-health issues because of his sex offense.

Transitional homes are similarly closed to him and homes that cater to sex offenders are "awful," Medina said. "He would never be able to make it in 1 of them."

Though he's convinced Leon has skills that make him employable, his background restricts the jobs available to him.

"That label closes so many doors," Medina said.

Though Medina said his grandson is not aware, or appreciative, of his efforts, the sacrifices in time, the hundreds of dollars in gas, the worry and concern, he won't give up.

Medina says he had a hard home life.

"I slept in box cars and alleys. I kept warm with newspapers and boxes. I had no guidance and no role models," he said. "Nobody cared about me and nobody took care of me.

"I don't want the kid to feel like that. I love him and I want him to have a life."

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