Top Official Criticized Over Letter : Camarillo: The city manager writes a note on behalf of a convicted rapist, a former city worker.

A top Camarillo official has drawn criticism for using city stationery in a letter to a Ventura County Superior Court judge describing a convicted rapist as a man who is “very capable of fitting in with society.”

Some Camarillo residents say they were disturbed by the letter written by City Manager Bill Little on behalf of 35-year-old James Paul Henderson, a former Camarillo water meter reader. And Camarillo’s mayor has urged a change in city personnel policy as a result of the criticism.

Henderson, who pleaded guilty to raping a Camarillo woman and threatening her with a knife, was sentenced in early February to 10 years in state prison. He will be eligible for parole in five years.

Mayor David Smith said he has received two telephone calls in the last week from residents who said the letter appeared to be a city recommendation for leniency for Henderson.

“What did it represent: private opinion, the opinion of an employer or the city? That is where the disagreement comes in,” Smith said. “It could be interpreted as all three.”

Joan Martino of Camarillo said she was angered by the letter, regardless of the city manager’s intent.

“I am very upset that he would use city letterhead and his title to help out a confessed rapist,” she said.

Martino said Little showed poor judgment and might have misused his position. She said she and some other residents are considering a move to seek Little’s dismissal.

But Little said Tuesday that he only wanted to outline Henderson’s work record for the court and acted as an employer rather than an official city spokesman. Little said he did not know Henderson, but wrote the letter at the request of Henderson’s mother, Marilyn Thiel. Thiel is city clerk for Camarillo.

“I relayed what was known to me as the work record of Mr. Henderson. There was no other purpose,” he said.

Henderson worked for the city as a water meter reader for about eight months in 1988 and was released from his job for failing to inform the city of his prior arrest record, Little said.

Little said he did not seek in the letter to excuse the severity of Henderson’s crime.

“There was no intention on my part to ask for leniency or to condone or support what Henderson did in the way of crime,” he said. “I was trying to be supportive of a city employee, his mother.”

Little wrote in the Dec. 5 letter about Henderson’s work performance that he “demonstrated that he is very capable of fitting in with society.” Other parts of the letter stated that Henderson did a good job for the city, court records show.

Little admitted that he could have phrased things more carefully and in hindsight “probably should not have sent the letter.”

The letter was one of several submitted to Ventura County Superior Court Judge Robert C. Bradley as part of Henderson’s pre-sentencing report.

According to court records, Henderson raped a woman last July after she accepted a ride from him when her car would not start. Henderson was arrested several days after the attack with the help of an anonymous informant.

Henderson was convicted of misdemeanor false imprisonment in 1982 in Santa Ana for holding a woman against her will, court records show. In 1986 he was arrested in Redondo Beach on suspicion of raping an estranged girlfriend. Charges, however, were never filed in that case.

In light of the controversy, Smith said he has proposed that the Camarillo City Council limit what can be said on city stationery about personnel matters to third parties.

“The letter in my opinion lists more than the facts of employment,” he said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Mary Peace, who prosecuted the case, said she thought that it was “inappropriate to say that a man who is convicted of rape and admitted to rape fits into society.”