Graduate of Sex Offender Program Is Released

Brian DeVries, the first violent sexual offender to graduate from a state treatment program, was granted unconditional release Monday after a judge ruled that surgical castration and seven years of intensive psychiatric treatment qualified the former predator to live free and unsupervised.

DeVries, 45, wore a wide grin as a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge formally ended DeVries’ regimen of mental health counseling, supervised living and tracking by global positioning satellite.

“Good luck, Mr. DeVries, and for God’s sake, don’t prove me wrong,” Judge Robert Baines said before DeVries left the courthouse a free man.

His father and stepmother accompanied him, and DeVries planned to move Monday night to their home near Olympia, Wash. The only requirement of his release is that he register with police in California and Washington as a convicted sexual offender.

After serving prison sentences for molesting nine boys in New Hampshire, Florida and San Jose, DeVries was ordered locked up in Atascadero State Hospital.

In an effort to win his freedom, DeVries underwent voluntary chemical and surgical castration and enrolled in a special state program for serious repeat offenders.

Among other requirements, DeVries underwent group and individual therapy, drug testing, random searches and constant surveillance.

“He’s a different person than when he started,” said DeVries’ public defender, Brian Matthews. “He’s made an extraordinary effort to succeed .... He said he didn’t want the fantasies anymore, he didn’t want the victims anymore. He knew he had a problem and he had to fix it.”

Had he not completed the treatment program, DeVries probably would have spent his life at the state hospital, Matthews said.

DeVries told reporters Monday that he had devoted his life to not re-offending.

“You have to check and balance your thoughts all the time,” he said. “I’m going to live that way now and in the future.”

Prosecutors had argued that DeVries should remain under close supervision at the Correctional Training Facility at Soledad in Monterey County, where he had lived in a trailer home since surrounding communities had refused to accept him on supervised release.

But a deputy district attorney in Santa Clara County, Dana Overstreet, said that the judge’s decision was based on voluminous evidence and evaluations.

“It’s scary to release a repeat offender, but he’s certainly far less dangerous than somebody who hasn’t undergone treatment,” Overstreet said. “He’s completely free to live like any other citizen now. There are no more restrictions. We have no more ability to put him back in the state hospital.”

Under a state law passed in 1996, child molesters and rapists who were considered too dangerous to be released could be held in state mental hospitals after serving their prison sentences. However, they could win release if they successfully completed what was then a new treatment program.

Though most inmates have refused treatment, DeVries has participated since 1997 and has pledged that he would lead a “kid-free” life.

Between February and August 2003, California Department of Mental Health officials looked at 116 homes and apartments in which to place DeVries on supervised release, only to abandon such plans when community members protested. When the court ordered that DeVries be released to the custody of his parents, Washington Gov. Gary Locke and the state attorney general opposed the move.

DeVries was finally placed in a trailer on the edge of the Soledad correctional facility.

After Monday’s ruling, his father, Barry, said he was happy to take his son back to Washington. “Now he goes on with his life,” Barry DeVries said.