Fearful Victim Flees After Attacker’s Parole

The last victim of a serial sex offender has run away from home out of fear of her attacker, who was released on parole Sunday, according to her family and women’s rights activists.

The 17-year-old Pasadena girl, who was 15 when she was sexually molested, has been in contact with her family since she disappeared from her home Friday, telling them she is afraid of him.

The girl’s attacker, Ted Jamerson, 41, was paroled Sunday from Vacaville State Prison.

The family declined to be interviewed by The Times, but has been in contact with Lyn Miller, a women’s rights activist with the Women’s Coalition in Pasadena who has been working closely with the family.

Miller said the girl called her three times over the weekend, leaving messages on her answering machine and saying each time that she would call again. “She sounded like a young, scared girl,” Miller said.

When Miller tried to return the girl’s calls at her home, the parents said the girl had run away.

The family is afraid, Miller said. The mother had been scheduled to speak at a coalition press conference Friday, but backed out at the last minute.

The parents told Miller that they don’t know where the girl is, but that they know she is safe. They have not reported her as a runaway to police.

“Her mother said she could just see it in her daughter’s eyes that the whole thing was replaying,” Miller said. “She left home sometime before the press conference.”

Jamerson was convicted in 1993 of unlawful sex with a minor in the incident. He was released on parole in 1994, but landed back in prison several months later on a parole violation involving drunk driving, said Stephen Goya, an administrator with the state Department of Corrections.

It was Jamerson’s fourth conviction on sexual assault charges; his first was in 1973.

The mayor’s office in Fontana, in western San Bernardino County, said it has been informed by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office that Jamerson has been paroled to an unincorporated area outside the city. The sheriff’s office and Department of Corrections would not confirm that information.

Many Fontana residents say they are frightened.

“There is not any place to release a person like this. The laws leave us powerless,” said Mary Richey, executive director of Project Sister, a sexual assault crisis prevention center for the Fontana area.

Richey said Jamerson will have to report to a parole office three times a week in the same building as a therapist who treats sexual assault victims.

“That really concerns me,” Richey said. “I know the level of fear is building because our lines are beginning to ring. What people seem to forget, under the current system a number of rapists are released every day.”

Women’s rights activists and some Pasadena police officers who wanted to delay Jamerson’s parole are outraged.

“Vicious sexual predators like Jamerson should never get out of prison,” said Assemblyman Bill Hoge (R-Pasadena).

Department of Corrections psychiatrists examined Jamerson three times and found he was not mentally disordered and could be released, said agency spokeswoman Christine May.

During his one- to four-year parole period, Jamerson will be electronically monitored and will undergo psychiatric therapy at an outpatient clinic, Goya said. In addition, he must stay at least 35 miles away from the girl’s residence.

Women’s rights activists are not convinced the therapy will help.

“He said he was going to move back to Pasadena to live with his sister when his parole is up,” said Susan Carpenter McMillan, president of the Women’s Coalition. “He could move right next door to his last victim.”