Depending on whom you talk to in Sacramento, a bill the governor
is expected to sign into law may or may not send convicted child
molester Brian DeVries back to Santa Clara County.
Depending on whom you talk to in Sacramento, a bill the governor is expected to sign into law may or may not send convicted child molester Brian DeVries back to Santa Clara County.
If a Superior Court judge decides that it does, Morgan Hill or Gilroy could be as good a candidate as any other county city for DeVries. City police say no one has contacted them about the possibility of moving him here.
“Certainly we would rather not have sex offenders in the city of Morgan Hill, but if does become the law we would … assign the necessary staff to periodically monitor the offender and comply with the stipultation of parole … just like any city police department would do,” MHPD Lt. Joe Sampson said.
DeVries was convicted of molesting an 8-year-old boy in 1994 in San Jose and had been previously convicted in several other states, dating back to 1978. In August 2002, he completed a program for sexual predators at Atascadero State Mental Facility. He was voluntarily castrated as part of his treatment.
The bill would require the state Department of Mental Health, which manages the treatment program, to release the sexual predators who complete it back into the counties where they lived before their arrests. It would also require those counties to work with the state on placing the treated molesters.
What is ambiguous, however, is whether the bill would retroactively apply to the three men the state has released through the program so far.
