Sex Offender Arrested in 2 Girls’ Abductions

A 30-year-old registered sex offender from Pasadena was arrested Friday in connection with the separate kidnapings of two San Gabriel Valley girls, including one in which the 4-year-old victim was raped.

Police arrested Steven Scott Rivers after detectives from San Gabriel and Monrovia released composite drawings of the abductor Thursday. A TV viewer saw the composites and called the Altadena sheriff’s station with a tip, officials said.

Police had been seeking a white male who grabbed a 4-year-old from a street in San Gabriel on May 27 and kidnaped a 5-year-old on Wednesday in Monrovia. The older child escaped unharmed when she jumped out of the truck while it was stopped at a traffic light.

Rivers, a truck driver who lives on Villa Street, was named in a list of about 100 recent Pasadena sex offenders. San Gabriel detectives got the list from Pasadena police early in the investigation, but did not zero in on him until after the tip.

Under California’s 45-year-old sex offender registration law, convicted sex criminals are required to register for life with local police departments every time they change residences. The lists, kept by police in each city, are of individuals with “really compulsive behavior,” most of whom have psychiatric histories and who repeat their crimes more than 60% of the time, said Jerry Dimaggio, regional parole administrator in Los Angeles.

Culling Rivers’ name from the list as the prime suspect within days of the first rape and abduction would have been difficult, San Gabriel Police Detective Darren Perrine said. The detective said he had investigated seven other registered sex offenders from San Gabriel and nearby Rosemead before starting on the Pasadena list.

“It wouldn’t be a righteous beef as far as saying it was a lackadaisical investigation,” Perrine said. “We had a male white (suspect) 25 to 30 years old. He wouldn’t have to be a sex offender. It’s just a tool we use.”

Each list provides only names and addresses of those registered. Details on their criminal histories must be obtained from the police agencies that arrested them.

Further, local police are not required to periodically visit those on the list or update the addresses, Perrine said. Pasadena’s full tally includes 1,082 sex offenders, many of them on the list for years, Pasadena police said.

Many on the list are supervised only during their three-year parole period. Visits to parole officers are required and psychiatric care and medication are provided if needed, Dimaggio said. But after the parole term expires, they are free of supervision.

Some registrants are never supervised, he added. They include those who are sentenced to probation and those convicted of minor sex offenses and not sent to prison.

Rivers never was on parole, according to state records.

“It’s a good idea but there’s not a lot of teeth in it,” Dimaggio said of the registration lists. “All the registration helps out with is to get some ideas on leads” after crimes are committed, he said.