Flawed System Hampers Valley Molester Search

Los Angeles police searching for a serial child molester stalking San Fernando Valley schoolchildren have been hampered by a system of tracking habitual sex offenders that is outmoded, inaccurate and, some authorities concede, often useless.

There are 20,198 registered sex offenders in Los Angeles County alone who are required by law to inform authorities where they live. But local and state law enforcement authorities acknowledged in interviews that there is no coordinated and workable system of monitoring convicted and paroled sex offenders, a majority of whom return to crime, according to Department of Corrections studies.

Los Angeles police have no reliable way of finding out which convicted molesters may fit a particular profile or even live in the neighborhoods in which an attack occurs. And though an estimated two-thirds of the sex offenders statewide move without contacting authorities, police have no way of keeping track of where they are.

“We at this time don’t have a system that tracks registered sex offenders,” said Officer Art Holmes, an LAPD spokesman temporarily assigned to the Valley task force tracking the molester. “At one time we were trying to develop one, but it had to be scrapped for lack of funds.”

Flaws in the system were dramatically illustrated in September, when a parolee who had raped schoolchildren in Pacoima returned after 11 years to the same intersection, stalking and raping three children before he was caught in Inglewood while trying to attack another young girl.

But Robert Lee Donaldson wasn’t identified as a suspect until a neighbor informed on him. And then detectives couldn’t find him because he wasn’t living at the address he originally registered, police said. Arrested Oct. 20 near an Inglewood school, Donaldson awaits trial on 24 counts of sex crimes, kidnaping and robbery.

The LAPD has been trying for three years to establish a computerized tracking system that would allow detectives to monitor sex offenders and crunch numbers to determine who may be a likely suspect based on appearance, history, location and other criteria. But there is no money to fund it, and the LAPD has more pressing priorities, said the LAPD’s chief computer specialist, Charles Drescher.

“The system needs improvement,” Drescher said. “There is no disagreement on that.”

To help local police, a pilot program establishing a proactive system of watching the worst offenders went into effect statewide in July, established by the state Department of Justice, so offenders can be stopped before they strike again, or caught quickly if they do.

But that system exists only in Northern California. And it won’t start in Los Angeles until at least mid-1995.

“It’s just unfortunate that we haven’t had a year of already being down in Los Angeles before this happened,” Michael S. Case, manager of the Sexual Habitual Offender pilot program, said about the Valley molester case. “I’m sure the results would have been more definitive.”

Without outside help, Los Angeles police must grapple with a system they concede is badly in need of an overhaul that isn’t likely anytime soon, especially with citizens clamoring for any available monies to be sunk into putting more cops on the beat.

“It gets frustrating to see what’s happening,” said veteran LAPD sex-crimes Detective Bill Dworin, who heads the Sexually Exploited Child Unit within the LAPD’s Juvenile Division. “Sometimes when we had some time, we used to check on individuals that we knew would be repeaters. But we don’t have the time now, and we don’t have the people.

“That problem is not only in Los Angeles but around the state and the country,” Dworin said. “There are just not enough cops.”

State Justice officials do maintain a computerized list of the state’s 64,000 registered sex offenders, including name, description, address and crime committed. But the system is incapable of searching by means of attack, descriptions of victims, time of attack--the sort of details police usually begin with in investigating such cases.

Marty Langley, supervisor of the Justice Department’s Sex/Arson Registration Unit in Sacramento, said her staff is too overburdened to be of much help, especially in finding the many sex offenders who simply “disappear.”

“L.A. is so big,” Langley said, “I get the feeling they have their own system of doing things.”

Tracking sex offenders has long been a problem throughout California, according to one 1988 study.

Police lack the time and manpower to ensure that sex offenders register and inform them of address changes, according to the study, conducted by the Department of Justice. Many of the molesters simply move, and police can’t find them. The statewide automated sex registration system doesn’t contain up-to-date information and vital information such as sex offenders’ “modus operandi” and personal characteristics. Authorities lack the training and familiarity with the sex registration system and don’t share information between agencies. And state laws can only charge the many sex registration violators who simply disappear with a simple misdemeanor, unless they do so willfully and repeatedly.

Because failure to register is a parole violation that can mean a return to prison, most convicted sex offenders usually register at first. But a vast majority don’t re-register after moving. As few as 20% of the addresses on file at any time are correct, authorities say.

“It’s like a 5- or 10-year-old phone book,” said Jack Stevens, assistant attorney general for legislative affairs in Sacramento. “Some of the numbers might still be right. But many of them won’t be.”

One check by the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department of 100 registered sex offenders, conducted last week, found incorrect addresses for about 80, said Lt. Michael Hau.

Sacramento police also conducted a three-day sweep of registrants in late October, arresting 125 sex offenders on various charges.

In the state capital, some reform efforts are under way.

A bill by Assemblyman Richard K. Rainey (R-Walnut Creek) would make it a felony for serious sex offenders to move without notifying authorities of their new address. Assemblywoman Barbara Alby (R-Fair Oaks) is pushing a similar bill that would also make registered sex offenders’ names, photographs and ZIP codes available to the public. Specific addresses wouldn’t be revealed for fear of vigilante attacks, but at least concerned parents would know if a molester lives nearby, she said.

“Obviously, the system is a failure,” Alby said. “We have to start somewhere.”

State Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside), a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has proposed a law similar to one in Washington, where habitual sexual offenders can be declared “sexual predators” and be held in treatment centers for an undetermined term, even after they have served their time.

Lawmakers say the atmosphere of concern over well-publicized molestation and child-kidnaping cases--including that of Petaluma abduction victim Polly Klaas--could help pass their bills.

“The sad thing is you have to have something awful happen to even bring this up,” said Susan Wallace, chief counsel to the Joint Committee on Prison Construction and Operations, chaired by Presley.

Until the Valley molester is caught, it will be impossible to tell if a computerized system could have helped.

But, police said, it could help them identify a large number of likely suspects--those sex offenders living in the area or fitting the profile of the attacker--an African American man between the ages of 35 to 45, about 190 pounds and close to 6 feet tall with a receding hairline and perhaps a few days growth of beard.

According to Drescher, the director of systems for the LAPD, city police collect registration information from sex offenders and send a copy of the material to the state. The information in the city computers suffers from the same defects as that maintained by the state--it is mostly outdated and limited.

Drescher said the LAPD is trying to put together a system that would allow detectives to sit at satellite computer terminals and request information on registered offenders in a certain area or with a certain modus operandi.

“One of my officers heard Lockheed was closing and was salvaging its terminals,” Drescher said. “We took all 20 of them--those computers were better than anything we had, and they were giving them away.”

To find the Valley molester, police have interviewed some registered sex offenders, run some computer checks and tried to examine arrest patterns. But a computerized system such as that envisioned by the department “definitely would be helpful to us,” one member of the Valley molester task force, Officer Mark Miller, said Tuesday.

Shortcomings in the sex-offender registration and tracking system were underscored when police searched for a molester preying on East Valley school children last fall.

Police only identified Robert Lee Donaldson, 34, as a suspect after a former neighbor in Pacoima came forward, authorities said.

“We, as an agency, are for a number of reasons woefully behind on computer technology,” said Detective Nancy Lyon, who supervises the LAPD Foothill Division sex-crimes unit that sought Donaldson.

Jacquelyn Lacey, the deputy district attorney prosecuting Donaldson, said if police had a tracking system in place, “they might have gotten him long before this informant tipped them off.”

If police had checked, they would have seen that Donaldson once lived on the same block where the attacks occurred, and that he was accused in 1982 of raping three other boys in the vicinity of recent attacks. He was convicted of one attack, and served 8 1/2 years of a 16-year sentence.

Even if authorities did have a computer to identify Donaldson as a potential suspect, they still would have had to find him. Like many other paroled sex offenders, he had moved--walking away from a downtown men’s shelter-- and never re-registered.

This story was written by staff writer Meyer with contributions from correspondent Mohan.