from: City News Service
The Riverside County District Attorney’s office expressed in a statement Friday its dissatisfaction with the release of a convicted sex offender who served less than a quarter of his sentence.
Frank Duane Brown, 72, entered guilty pleas in 2013 to six felony counts of forced lewd and lascivious sexual acts on a child under the age of 14, receiving a 45-year prison sentence.
After a letter was delivered from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Scott P. Williams presided over a July 18 hearing this year to determine whether Brown qualified under the conditions of California’s “Compassionate Release” law due to a metastatic liver cancer diagnosis.
Williams granted the compassionate release petition Thursday, ordering Brown to be free within 30 days, approximately 34 years before the original conclusion of his sentence.
“While early release has become increasingly common, it is appalling that this release was even being considered given the offender’s violent crime against a child,” District Attorney Mike Hestrin said. “Once again, the state places the victim in a traumatic situation, forcing her to fight to keep her perpetrator in prison for the sentence handed down by a court of law. By doing so, victims must relive their devastating experiences. How is this justice?”
The District Attorney published a statement Friday, asserting that the release order occurred “despite the best efforts from [their] office.”
The statement continued by expressing opposition to Brown’s release not only due to a continuous and severe threat to public safety, but also on the basis of “a lack of reliable evidence supporting Brown’s medical condition and outlook.”
In addition to the written release, the District Attorney also released a video message from the victim, who anonymously spoke about the repeated sexual abuse, how she first dealt with the lasting trauma and the scarring effects of Judge Williams’ decision.
In the video, the victim, a woman identified only as Jane Doe, said that Brown lied in claiming not to remember her despite living together.
“He raped me almost every single day,” Doe said. “Throughout this process, I just had to remember to use all the tools I learned in therapy and counseling, take a deep breath and know that’s what a narcissist does. That’s what a rapist does. That’s what an abuser does.”
After recalling experiencing pain and trauma throughout the original case, Doe said that Brown’s jail sentence had brought some amount of mental and emotional closure, but the granted petition had left her “forever scarred.”
For a prisoner to qualify under the state’s compassionate release law, available to terminally ill inmates with less than 18 months to live, they must “demonstrate that they are not a risk to society,” among other conditions.
“Our office remains steadfast in opposing the early release of felons to protect victims and ensure public safety,” Hestrin said. “It is outrageous that we must constantly advocate to keep a clearly dangerous sexual predator behind bars for their full sentence. This is a battle we are committed to fighting every single day until this practice is put to an end.”
Rev Red