Serial Rapist May Go Free Without Restrictions

If authorities cannot find housing for a serial rapist, he could be freed from Atascadero State Hospital without the severe restrictions that physicians say would neutralize his threat to the community.

Earlier this month, Marin County Superior Court Judge John S. Graham ruled that sexual predator Patrick Henry Ghilotti, 45, was safe to release under strict conditions, including being fitted with a global positioning device to track his movements and taking testosterone-lowering drugs.

The detailed agreement under which Ghilotti would be released is being finalized.

But the terms being so laboriously crafted depend on the eight-time rapist having a home for authorities to search, a place to be watched by police and a base for the satellite tracking device.

If housing cannot be found soon, the release agreement will fall apart. There is a chance Ghilotti could be released in December with no restrictions, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Alan Charmatz.

On Monday, state officials told Graham that so far they have struck out in their efforts to find housing in Marin County. State policy requires sexually violent predators to be returned to the county in which they were convicted.

The problem is that, even though the state is offering to pay more for rent than market levels, no Marin County landlord has been found who wants to provide housing for a known sexual predator. Graham could require that the state look beyond Marin County for Ghilotti’s housing.

“I have contacted just about every hotel, numerous apartment complexes, county property, state property. I’ve worked with every known housing authority . . . and so far I have come up with no place” for Ghilotti, said Christopher A. Chapa, director of the state’s conditional release program in the Bay Area.

Graham told attorneys he finds it “perfectly understandable” that landlords would worry about renting to a known serial rapist. But “we are missing an opportunity with Mr. Ghilotti’s cooperation to have him released under terms and conditions for supervision. If we wait until December, he will be released without terms and conditions.”

Ed Farrell, Ghilotti’s attorney, said he is optimistic that the details can be cleared up in time so his client can be released under conditions leaving him “virtually as watched as anyone has ever been.”

Ghilotti would be the first inmate released in California under a controversial 1996 law, which requires most dangerous sex offenders to receive at least two years of medical treatment at a state hospital on top of their prison sentence. If doctors don’t think they are ready for release after that, they may be returned to the state hospital for another two years. The cycle would then repeat.

Graham ruled Aug. 1 that Ghilotti was fit for release. By law, the state then has 21 days to prepare a plan for freeing him. That period was set to expire today, but Graham gave the state an extension of unspecified length.

But if Ghilotti, who has spent most of his adult life either in prison or in a state mental hospital, is still in Atascadero on Dec. 1, “the state has no jurisdiction to keep him,” Charmatz said.

“I am doing everything in my power to see he gets housed,” the prosecutor said. “The only way to protect the public is to see he is under this conditional-release program. If he is outright released, we have no control other than law enforcement having the manpower to watch him all the time. They don’t.”