Serial Killer reformed and released.

[Exorcist_Fist]

KOBE SCHOOLBOY KILLER FREED




A young man was released from detention Wednesday, little more than six years after he, as a 14-year-old, severed the head from one of his murder victims and placed it on his school gate.

The now 21-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is back on the streets after correctional behavior authorities deemed he will not lapse into a criminal lifestyle.

The man identified so far only as Youth A will be supervised, but permitted to re-enter society.

Normally tight-lipped Justice Ministry officials decided it would be better for Youth A and the society now forced to accept him that his release be disclosed to the public.

"We considered his privacy, but also decided it was in the public interest to disclose his release," a ministry official said on condition of anonymity. "It would have been harmful to the man's rehabilitation had his release not been publicized and society's anxiety maintained."

Kanto Parole Board officials approved Youth A's release on Wednesday morning.

Sources close to the board said Youth A has matured and calmed down, fitting into a life shared with others.

Tendencies toward sexual sadism that he displayed shortly after his killings have weakened and he is not suffering from any mental illnesses many feared he would succumb to.

When he entered a juvenile reformatory, Youth A expressed a desire to die alone, but now views the period as one where he was shrouded in an "hallucinatory" state where he could not understand why he had been driven to commit the heinous crimes he did. Youth A has promised never to fall into the same state.

Youth A has progressed well in occupational therapy, apparently promising never to forget the victims of his slaughter and promising to work hard to get money to compensate their bereaved families.

In October 1997, the Kobe District Court ruled that Youth A was filled with a strong sexual sadism and anti-social tendencies that drove him to murder and ordered the then 14-year-old to be treated at a medical reformatory in Fuchu, Tokyo.

He was placed on a 5 1/2-year treatment program at the reformatory and then sent to the Tohoku Reformatory in November 2001 to begin occupational therapy.

In July 2002, authorities decided to keep the man detained until the end of 2004 at least, and sent him back to the Kanto medical reformatory to prepare for his eventual release back into society.

In March last year, officials at the reformatory determined Youth A would not commit crime again and applied for permission to allow him to be released, with his lifestyle monitored after gaining freedom.

Correctional behavior authorities approved the request and began preparing Youth A for his return to society and working out the best time for his re-entry to take place. (Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, March 10, 2004)

[Jock Armstrong]

Jesus H Cheerist! Anyone who enjoys getting off on killing as a sexual thill cannot ever be rehabilitated. Watch the news for another fun decapitation escapade.:rolleyes:

[Mekugi]

What worries me is that he anonymous. How many more are there like this??

Little Jun, before he was led into the mountains and had his head sawed off:
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9706/28/japan.arrest/hase.jpg

[Mekugi]

...

[Exorcist_Fist]

What worries me is that they let him out. You can not reform a serial killer. You just put him in with the general prison populace and let them kill him.

[Ellis Amdur]

Dan -

This idea that the general pop will kill the serial killer or child molester is one of the big myths of the public. What gets you killed in prison is vulnerability and weakness, not the crime. Jeffrey Dahmer was a creepy wimp and a weakling - that's what got him killed, along with his reputation.

Most of these guys, serial killer or rapist - whatever - just do their time, and if they happen to be tough, do just fine.

Ellis Amdur

[Mekugi]

Hi!

While we've got your ear and being that you are involved in counseling and have spent a spell in Japan:

What's you're professional opinion about all this? Do you think that this type of crime is "recoverable" and do you think the Japanese system is capable of doing so?


Originally posted by Ellis Amdur
Dan -

This idea that the general pop will kill the serial killer or child molester is one of the big myths of the public. What gets you killed in prison is vulnerability and weakness, not the crime. Jeffrey Dahmer was a creepy wimp and a weakling - that's what got him killed, along with his reputation.

Most of these guys, serial killer or rapist - whatever - just do their time, and if they happen to be tough, do just fine.

Ellis Amdur

[Ellis Amdur]

Russ -

Let me try to throw a bunch of info out in as concise a manner as I can.

1) It is legitimate to consider a small child who commits a heinous act as possibly changeable. I'd recommend that the reader her gets the heartbreaking book Cries Unheard by Sereny regarding a ten year old girl who strangled two young boys. Without revealing too many details, it was horrifyingly clear later that she was enacting and informing the world in the only way she could of what was happening to her. After many years of incarceration and treatment, she is an adult, and by all accounts a decent human being and mother.
2) The wonderful author, Anne Perry, in fact, as a teenager, participated in the brutal murder of the other girls' mother. This was made into a movie (without her approval) called Beautiful Creatures. She, too, is reformed and a fine human being.

BUT - a sexually sadistic serial killer????? It is inconceivable to me. I can imagine the faint possibility that the reformatory's claims are true, but a 14 year old is not the same as a ten year old, and it would be my belief (speaking in metaphor here) that the perverse fantasies and horrific hatred and aggression is etched into the neurology and psyche by this point. I expect we will hear from him again. Not only this, a psychopath, which he almost surely is, is enormously skilled at reading the naive therapist (they definitely have had limited experience with such an individual) and saying exactly what they need to hear him say. My expectation is that he played them like a guitar.

Oh, and by the way, the Japanese psychiatric system, in my limited experience and in my reading, is archaic in the extreme. Of course, I haven't reviewed the case/seen the man myself, and I can imagine, (hell, I can imagine anything) that he is the exception - one in a million - but I don't believe so, given the nature of his crimes.

In sum, though, I believe he should be treated with upmost humanity, but never given access to society again.

Ellis Amdur

[Joseph Svinth]

For a job, a fellow like that should consider politics.

[Ellis Amdur]

Joe -

Not far-fetched at all. The psychological profile of a number of politicians and psychopaths are quite similar. The difference is that the politician or entrepeneur uses manipulation to satisfy, sometimes unscrupulously or immorally (Ken Lay, for example), a profit motive. In other words, he's going to get "paid." In the politician, in addition to any possible financial gain is the narcissistic drive to power. In essence, they are satisfying the same ego drives as ordinary citizens, but with a limited interest in the well-being of others. (Although they can pretend it quite well)

Most psychopaths, unlike the unrealistic movie version, are screw-ups. They have grandiose fantasies, but they usually get caught for the stupidest reasons. The basic motivation is not profit, like that of the narcissist, the politician or the used-car salesman. It is the manipulation itself. Getting over, degrading someone is worth far more than winning, and in this light, the degradation of violating someone is worth the consequent prison time or in extreme cases, even death. Unlike the politician (unless we are talking about Stalin or Mao), they psychopath is satisfying a drive to dominate and degrade, not a profit motive, even though as a con-man, for example, he looks like he's trying to get paid.

Ellis Amdur

[Jody Holeton]

The Japanese have a mental health system?

That explains all the suicides and mass bullying in their country.

The Japanese health system is a sham, from dental work to going to the emergency room.

[Mekugi]

Ellis,

Thank you for the excellent reply. I sometimes wonder if I am too emotionally driven to have a resasonable conversation about a subject like this, so a voice of reason and experience is always a good thing.



Originally posted by Ellis Amdur
Russ -

Let me try to throw a bunch of info out in as concise a manner as I can.

1) It is legitimate to consider a small child who commits a heinous act as possibly changeable. I'd recommend that the reader her gets the heartbreaking book Cries Unheard by Sereny regarding a ten year old girl who strangled two young boys. Without revealing too many details, it was horrifyingly clear later that she was enacting and informing the world in the only way she could of what was happening to her. After many years of incarceration and treatment, she is an adult, and by all accounts a decent human being and mother.
2) The wonderful author, Anne Perry, in fact, as a teenager, participated in the brutal murder of the other girls' mother. This was made into a movie (without her approval) called Beautiful Creatures. She, too, is reformed and a fine human being.

BUT - a sexually sadistic serial killer????? It is inconceivable to me. I can imagine the faint possibility that the reformatory's claims are true, but a 14 year old is not the same as a ten year old, and it would be my belief (speaking in metaphor here) that the perverse fantasies and horrific hatred and aggression is etched into the neurology and psyche by this point. I expect we will hear from him again. Not only this, a psychopath, which he almost surely is, is enormously skilled at reading the naive therapist (they definitely have had limited experience with such an individual) and saying exactly what they need to hear him say. My expectation is that he played them like a guitar.

Oh, and by the way, the Japanese psychiatric system, in my limited experience and in my reading, is archaic in the extreme. Of course, I haven't reviewed the case/seen the man myself, and I can imagine, (hell, I can imagine anything) that he is the exception - one in a million - but I don't believe so, given the nature of his crimes.

In sum, though, I believe he should be treated with upmost humanity, but never given access to society again.

Ellis Amdur

[Mekugi]

Jody,

you know that's as funny as it is sad.

I wonder if the police/government's "privacy protection" isn't a whitewashed way of saying "we have to keep the public from having their own justice with this bastard, because we are too inept to imprison him".
I feel that if I were the father of one the victims I would be scour the earth trying to find this guy to keep him from using perfectly good air. I know this would probably mean "life imprisonment" for me, but there is always the hope that I could be "reformed" and then released in six years. :rolleyes: Ahh, bitter irony.

-Russ

Originally posted by Jody Holeton
The Japanese have a mental health system?

That explains all the suicides and mass bullying in their country.

The Japanese health system is a sham, from dental work to going to the emergency room.

[Jody Holeton]

Dear Russ,

I was in Kyoto when this kid was plying his trade and they blamed foreigners because he used English in his letters to the cops.

Some people are born bad and in Japan......
The child porn, the gang rape bit, cops not doing their jobs and a health system.....

If I were the father/mother it would be payback time but I'm an American.

I have to remind myself EVERYDAY here in Asia that I am an OBSERVER.
The Japanese and the Koreans will just have to find out for themselves the hard way.

Good luck Russ and CYA!

[Exorcist_Fist]

Ellis, you misinterpreted my comment, and took it in the wrong direction, but perhaps it was a bit too open ended.

[Mekugi]

I have an 8 year old in Osaka from a previous marriage and a bun in the oven. My opinion is pretty intense about issues like this and frankly, I would rather see a death sentance given to this...(edited for expletive), ahem, person. Just knowing that I might be riding the train with a guy like this makes me ill. Knowing that kids might play outside his apartment has my flesh crawling. It's the little things like this that keep me forever on guard with my kids and paranoid about anyone, really.

A name that comes to mind immediately is Wesley Allen Dodd. Knowing the history behind Dodd points to what can and more than likely will happen with this one. I can only imagine how many more senseless and perverse actions it will take to lock this one back up. Another point is that police and officials know who he and the public does not; so who is to say that the next time you hear about a child murder it isn't him!? If it is, then the gubberment doesn't need to hide anything! It's almost too perfect in some ways.

Then again, you're right, I'm only a foreigner who doesn't really understand.

-Russ

Originally posted by Jody Holeton
Dear Russ,

I was in Kyoto when this kid was plying his trade and they blamed foreigners because he used English in his letters to the cops.

Some people are born bad and in Japan......
The child porn, the gang rape bit, cops not doing their jobs and a health system.....

If I were the father/mother it would be payback time but I'm an American.

I have to remind myself EVERYDAY here in Asia that I am an OBSERVER.
The Japanese and the Koreans will just have to find out for themselves the hard way.

Good luck Russ and CYA!

[Exorcist_Fist]

Sexual predator lives near a school
Oakland neighbors protest his moving in across the street

Peter Fimrite, Charlie Goodyear, Chronicle Staff Writers Saturday, March 13, 2004


------------------------------------------------------------------------





The long and troubled odyssey of convicted sexual predator Cary Verse took a new turn Friday when he moved into an Oakland abbey across the street from an elementary school, prompting an angry demonstration from hundreds of citizens.

"We want him out immediately,'' said Sylvia Rodriguez, who joined the crowd gathered outside the abbey protesting Verse's release into a neighborhood where, city officials said, he might spend just two days.

Such feelings have met Verse, 33, everywhere he's been sent to live in the five weeks since his release from Atascadero State Hospital, where he spent six years after serving three years in prison for sexual battery. The first stop in his search for a new home was a run-down motel in Mill Valley, where residents held almost daily protests until he moved into the Jefferson Inn Hotel in downtown Oakland hotel a week later.

Verse quietly checked out of the hotel late Thursday night, according to a hotel clerk, and moved into St. Patrick's Abbey on East 12th Street in the Fruitvale district. The abbey, which runs a halfway house for recovering alcoholics and addicts, is across the street from Ascend Elementary School.

The church's pastor, the Rev. Donald Weeks, said he offered Verse a home after seeing a television report about his case. Weeks said two Oakland Police officers told him earlier this week that he would be breaking the law if he allowed Verse to live there, but Contra Costa Deputy District Brian Haynes told Weeks in a letter that he was within his rights, and the law, to offer Verse a home.

Weeks said Verse will be kept on a tight rein and probably won't stay long.

"He can't be beyond 100 feet of the tracking unit in his room,'' Weeks said, showing reporters Verse's second-floor room while the sex offender stayed out of sight. "I don't think he'll be here more than a week.''

Weeks stressed that Verse has been convicted of sex crimes only against men who were roughly his own age -- a point those working to find Verse a home have made repeatedly.

"He's not a child predator,'' Weeks said. "If this man has stayed in prison for 12 years, then he's paid his debt.''

Weeks said Verse is under a gag order and could not comment.

But word that Verse was still in Oakland -- and living so near an elementary school -- angered residents and city officials, some of whom joined the protest that started about 3 p.m.

"This is totally uncalled for. It makes no sense," fumed City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, who learned of Verse's arrival about 11 a.m. "The state has a responsibility to make sure dangerous people are not released in the middle of communities next to schools. This is the wrong place. Oakland should not be the dumping ground for anybody."

De La Fuente said Liberty Healthcare Corp., which holds a contract with the state to find Verse a place to live, agreed under pressure to move him within 48 hours. Officials at Liberty Healthcare and the state Department of Mental Health would not comment because of a gag order in the case issued by a Contra Costa County judge.

De La Fuente said he spoke with Verse on Friday and told him in no uncertain terms that he wanted him to move out of the neighborhood, out of the city and out of the county.

"Mr. Verse was not arrested in Alameda County," De La Fuente told The Chronicle. "He was arrested in Contra Costa County. He should be placed in Contra Costa County."

Mayor Jerry Brown was out of town and unavailable for comment.

Police Chief Richard Word said he will send more officers to patrol the neighborhood until Verse moves on.

"It is unacceptable," Word said. "Oakland simply has enough to deal with. There are nearly 3,000 parolees and close to 7,000 probationers living in Oakland. Further, there are already 20 high-risk sex offenders registered in the city. To place yet another in Oakland, when he should have been placed in Contra Costa County, is both insensitive and insulting."

Neighborhood residents agreed.

"I think it's very tragic -- tragic both for him and the neighborhood, '' said Fran Matarrese . "That's terrible. It's stupid. We're trying to raise a generation that doesn't end up like this.''

Verse, a self-described devout Jehovah's Witness, is a four-time convicted sex offender who, records show, has a history of sexual violence that dates to age 17, when he assaulted a 14-year-old male teammate on his high school track team.

After the attack, Verse was confined to a juvenile detention camp in Alameda County, where he sexually assaulted a 17-year-old. He was sentenced to three years and eight months in prison.

After his parole in Feb. 1992, Verse sexually assaulted a man at a homeless shelter near Richmond, where the two men were staying. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison and was paroled in 1998.

He was sent to Atascadero under a 1995 state law that allows the state to continue holding sexually violent predators past their prison release dates by designating them mental patients in need of rehabilitation.

While in treatment, Verse won consistent praise for his progress in therapy. He won his release after agreeing to be chemically castrated. He must now wear an electronic monitoring bracelet and submit to polygraph testing, among other conditions.

A clerk at the Jefferson Inn Hotel said Verse was a model tenant.

"He didn't cause no trouble," said the clerk, who identified himself only as Richard. "What do you expect him to do? You guys (the media) were on his neck the whole time. He was a pretty good tenant. We saw him once in a while, but not that much. He was mostly in his room."

[Mekugi]

I'm not sure how these two things relate. Although this guy is a sicko and needs to be kept away from society (IMHO), he is not a child killer.

BTW...
"He didn't cause no trouble," said the clerk, who identified himself only as Richard.(snip) "He was a pretty good tenant. We saw him once in a while, but not that much. He was mostly in his room."

This is almost exactly what was said of Wesley Allen Dodd.

[Exorcist_Fist]

It relates in this way:

Like serial killing, sexaul predation is a disease that we are not entirely certain we can cure, and the question is, should we be risking the safety of the public to find out?