Two child molesters deemed safe to return to society by California’s Board of Parole Hearings stirred up the question: can sex offenders be rehabilitated?

Stephanie Nguyen, District Assemblymember for the district of Elk Grove, California,  does not believe child molesters can rehabilitate, so she is proposing to update elderly parole requirements to require that the Board of Parole Hearings and CDCR refer all sex offenders with life sentences for psychological evaluation if they are categorized as “sexually violent predators.”

According to CalMatters, currently California’s Department of State Hospitals can commit offenders who are determinate offenders. Nguyen’s proposed change would require DSH to decide if a person who is released by the BPH is also someone who needs continued care.

Rick Evans, vice-chair of San Quentin’s sexual offenders’ rehabilitative group called Bridging Responsibility, Accountability and Vulnerability through Empathy, attempted to dispel the community belief that released sex offenders are reintegrated back into society without any safeguards in place. 

“The public doesn’t understand that parolees with a life sentence are required by law to continue therapy, and complete a year-long Sex Offender Treatment Program once released,” said Evans.

He added sex offenders with life sentences must usually register for life, must wear a GPS tracking device for [at least] three years while submitting to polygraphs monthly, and must not leave a predetermined area — usually a 30-mile radius.

Nguyen, whose district is where David Allen Funston and Gregory Lee Vogelsang committed numerous sex crimes against children, co-authored new legislation to lengthen the incarceration time of child molesters. The two were to serve sentences totaling 430 years to life, but both were released much earlier due to the current sentencing laws of the state.

The current laws, called elderly parole, were statutes that dated to 2014, as part of court-mandated efforts to decrease the state’s prison population. 

The 2014 laws state that a petitioner must serve a minimum of 25years and be 60 years or older. In 2020, new laws lowered the elderly parole eligibility to 20 years of incarceration and reduced the age to 50.

Funston, sentenced to three consecutive 25-years-to-life terms, plus an additional 20-year sentence, earned parole at 67 years old after serving 27 years or 28.42% of his sentence. Vogelsang, sentenced to 355-years-to-life, earned parole at 57 after serving 27 years or 7.6% of his required sentence.

Nguyen said,  “I think rehabilitation is a thing — people can rehabilitate [but] I don’t know that you can necessarily change yourself from wanting or stopping yourself from molesting little children. And as a mother to two young girls, this scares me” said Nguyen.

Nguyen is attempting to return the early parole program to requiring that all sex offenders remain in prison until age 65. She said, “When you’ve done things like molest little boys, ages 5 to 11, I just don’t know that you can change from that.”

On Feb. 26, Funston was immediately re-arrested by Placer County and now remains in the Roseville jail, awaiting a new trial on additional charges, and Vogelsang faces a recession hearing to reverse his proposed release, CalMatters reported.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics created a meta-analysis, or technique that summarizes the results of research that combines independent studies. Their last report examined recidivism rates among individuals after their incarceration over a five-year follow-up period.

The report concluded that 48% of sex offenders released reoffended, which is far less than other violent crimes examined in the report. 

It must be noted that the report, which analyzed data from 34 states noted that the 48% of sex offenders re-arrested for any crime within five years of release, did not imply they committed another sexual offense.

“When a fellow sex offender frets about our laws, it signifies to me that they don’t yet fully understand the devastating impact of sexual assaults on [our] victims,” said SQ resident Steve Matlak. “With progress in recovery, remorse and a strong desire to make amends … [we] become much more concerned about those we hurt.”

B.R.A.V.E. facilitator Thomas Shelton said he would like the world to understand that although there is no justifiable reason that sexually violent predators committed their crimes, over 90% of sexual predators have been sexually victimized as children as well. “This is why the BPH recommends residents who are denied at their hearings, return to SQRC and complete the year-long B.R.A.V.E. program. B.R.A.V.E. requires sex offenders to commit to 200 hours of rehabilitative efforts in a year before they are considered for release.”