Protest May Force Rapist to Be Moved : Parole: Modoc County delegation meets with Wilson. State considers possibility that a victim may now live near site chosen for released sex offender.

The Wilson Administration on Monday began reviewing new information from Modoc County officials that could lead to the transfer of serial rapist Melvin A. Carter from that remote northeast California county.

A delegation from the county pressed its case for the removal of Carter in separate meetings with Gov. Pete Wilson and his top prison managers Monday afternoon, after which a top Wilson aide said the state is open to the idea.

“They raised a couple of issues we are looking at, and depending on what we find, we may reconsider,” said Craig Brown, undersecretary of the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency. “We are not reconsidering now.”

Brown said the Administration is concerned about reports, so far unconfirmed, that one of Carter’s victims lives in the county. Brown said the state also is reviewing the county’s contention that the placement of Carter at a minimum security work camp violates a state agreement with the U.S. Forest Service for use of the land.

Administration policy, Brown said, is to not release parolees to within 35 miles of one of their victims. He said the Corrections Department is seeking to verify the story of an Alturas woman who says she was raped by Carter 16 years ago when she was a student at Cal State Hayward.

Brown also acknowledged that the placement of Carter at the Devil’s Garden work camp contradicts what the state said when it built the camp in the mid-1980s.

“We did tell them we wouldn’t put violent inmates there,” Brown said.

Carter, 49, was convicted in 1982 of raping 12 women and admitted assaulting dozens of others. He was released last week after serving half of his 25-year prison sentence. He is living at the work camp voluntarily but under the supervision of state prison guards.

Wilson early Monday sought to distance himself from the fury surrounding Carter’s release, telling reporters that he did not direct the Corrections Department to send Carter to Modoc County.

“I did not give them a specific instruction as to where,” Wilson said. “I set up the kind of circumstances I thought would provide maximum protection. The department found this particular location.”

Although by day’s end the Administration was taking a serious look at the chance that one of Carter’s victims might be living in Modoc County, Wilson earlier showed little concern about the report.

“This is a man who claims he raped a hundred women, and they are probably all over the state,” Wilson said. “We don’t know where they are. We have to put him somewhere.”

And although Wilson at first refused to meet with the Modoc County delegation, he later changed his mind and invited a few of the group’s representatives into his office for a short discussion.

Joe Colt, chairman of the Modoc County Board of Supervisors, said afterward that he was satisfied with the governor’s response.

“He basically said we will work together,” Colt said. “We asked him if we could work together to resolve this. He said yes. He was genuinely concerned with the problem.”

The skirmish over Carter’s fate also took a new turn in the court system Monday.

Last week, Modoc County Dist. Atty. Ruth Sorensen obtained a Superior Court order barring Carter’s release in the region. Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren quickly sought to invalidate the order and Friday won a temporary stay of its enforcement from the 3rd District Court of Appeal.

On Monday, Sorensen filed a reply, asserting that corrections officials had violated state law by failing to make written findings for sending Carter to Modoc and failed to provide local authorities with notice of his parole.

Times staff writer Jenifer Warren contributed to this story.