IN MY SHOES: “My Rapist Is About To Get Out Of Jail”
The Los Angeles Times details the plight of Arline Mathews, an 82-year old who is “consumed by fear that the man who raped her 22 years ago could soon be released from prison and follow through on threats to kill her”:
Mathews still fumes over the L.A. County district attorney's decision 21 years ago to plea-bargain eight rapes attributed to Roy down to three.
"You plea-bargain when you have a weak case, or when you have crimes that only involve property. You don't plea-bargain eight rapes, and who knows how many others, when you've got victims who can testify," she says.
Roy was sent away in 1989 under the state's Determinate Sentencing Law, invalidated two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. Under that old law, he won't face a parole board before his release after completing half of his 44-year term.
Mathews' only hope is that, as a sex offender, Roy should be subjected to a psychological evaluation before release, although few are ever held up by that review.
"Everyone says not to worry, that he will be evaluated, that they're almost certain he won't be let out - almost certain," Mathews says. "The refrain is, 'It's somebody else's department.' Everybody relies on everybody else. It's nobody's responsibility to make sure he doesn't get out." …
Roy will be screened by psychologists before his release, as required by law for any inmate convicted of a sexually violent crime. But the state's record for keeping sex offenders off the streets offers Mathews little comfort. Only about 2% of the 27,000-plus sex offenders evaluated over 13 years have been confined in mental institutions upon their release from prison.
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