'Monster' on the Block
Jan. 19, 2005 — -- There is a man who many people in San Diego have called a monster.Dan Coffey, a local resident, said, "He's an untrustworthy, monstrous human being."
No one in this community, from parents to politicians, wants him around. "This guy is going to be like a beast hunting these kids down. That's what he's going to do, and we can't trust him," said State Assemblyman Juan Vargas.
The man they were talking about is Matthew Hedge, a 42-year-old convicted child molester. Hedge was about to be released from Atascadero State Mental Hospital, where 500 of California's most high-risk sex offenders are forced to live. Hedge was sent there eight years ago, after he violated parole. He had previously served six years in prison.
Even Hedge said he understands the community's fears. "I understand people say, 'Oh, the monsters,'" he said. "There's no way I could sit here and say that it's wrong, the community's wrong. I understand they don't want me out there. Why take the chance? Leave him in."
The question is: What are we, as a society, to do with convicted child molesters who have served their prison terms?
For some, the answer is simple."Where do we put them? I know where we should put them. We should put them in prison or institutionalize them. They should not get out," Vargas said.
Others believe that through intensive therapy, some pedophiles can learn to control their impulses and lead relatively normal lives.
"Primetime" looked at this controversial issue by following Hedge as he tried to re-enter society. How did he handle his freedom, and how did his neighbors react to him?
For Hedge, the obsessive attraction to children started when he was a child himself.
"When I was about 6 or 7 I was molested," he said.
Later, as a young teen he had sex with other boys. It was an appetite he never grew out of. At 26, he committed the first of a series of terrible crimes.
Left alone with a friend's two young sons, he molested them both and forced them to have sex with each other.
"I guess that my thinking at the time was, I'm not gonna hurt 'em, I'm gonna teach 'em," Hedge said. "You know, if anything they're gonna feel what I felt when I was copulated as a child, and it won't hurt them."
A week later the boys told their grandmother, and Hedge went on the run.
"I just figured the bottom line was I'm gonna get caught and go to prison for what I did to those boys, so I started just masturbating to thoughts of the boys," he said.
Hedges would masturbate in his car, often in front of schools so children could see him.
Still on the run, and intoxicated, Hedge was at a friend's home that had a pool. When no adults were around, he jumped in and fondled two young girls swimming there. (Hedge is one of the 20 percent of child molesters attracted to both sexes.)
Afterward, Hedge said he passed out in his car and awoke to police slapping handcuffs on him.
Hedge pleaded guilty to molestation. He went to prison for six years and was released, but he violated parole by failing to go to therapy and dating a woman with children.
Then, under a controversial civil commitment law, Hedge was judged to be mentally ill -- a "sexually violent predator" -- and committed against his will to the state mental hospital, theoretically indefinitely.
The Atascadero mental hospital has gates, guards and all the other trappings of a prison. But it isn't technically about punishment. It's about therapy. The goal is to teach the men to control their sexual craving for children so they can eventually be released back into society -- a decision that, in large part, is up to senior psychologist Jesus Padilla and his staff.
"This disorder is not something that can be cured," Padilla said."It's seen as a lifelong disorder, much like diabetes, and treatment helps to teach these individuals how to treat their disorder and stay on top of for the rest of their lives."
The treatment -- mostly talk therapy -- takes an average of six years to complete. First, the pedophiles have to admit their crimes.
Donald Swick, for example, is a former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy, and he spoke matter-of-factly about luring children.
"The first victim I had was a 9-year-old girl," he said. "We groom them in subtle ways and more or less just talked them into it. We played on their natural curiosity and their interest in doing something exciting. And they went along with it because of their respect for adult authority."
For many, like Hedge and Swick, it's a cycle that started when they were very young.
"I started when I was 5, 6 years old, and I'm 70 now and it's still affecting my life," Swick said.
But not all pedophiles were abused as children. One pedophile at Atascadero said, "Some of us had a 'Leave It to Beaver' kind of life. I went to church every Sunday and Wednesday. Still, I wanted to have a secret life, get way from the norm."
The patients learn to avoid their own risky behavior, such as using drugs and alcohol. The cost of this treatment is $130,000 per patient per year. It's pricey, but Padilla is convinced it's worth it.
"The treatment process does reduce the likelihood of recidivism," said Padilla.
At the time of his release, Hedge was only the fourth patient in the 10 years since the law was passed to complete the program. Those who graduated before him faced huge public protest, fear and threats. One was forced to move four times in 10 months. Hedge knew he could expect more of the same, but he was convinced he was ready
"The best I can do is say I guarantee you I will try with all my soul to continue to stay in abstinence to do the things I'm supposed to do and in doing that I won't reoffend. ... I can handle it, you know," he said.
To help prepare him for release, Hedge role-played situations with other patients in therapy, such as how to introduce himself to potentially hostile neighbors and how to deal with the rejection he was certain to face.
Hedge was released into a world terrified of people like him -- in part because of reports about children like Jessica Lunsford and Shasta Groene, who were abused by convicted child molesters. Even Oprah Winfrey has launched a crusade saying all convicted child molesters should get life.
Hedge, though, said the harsher society becomes, the more molesters are likely to become violent.
"People who are desperate like that will not only act out, but they'll try and make sure there are no witnesses," he said. "We know what that means. That means people will die. And there's absolutely no excuse for it. It's just a matter of understanding the mind of someone who does this stuff."
Treatment programs like Atascadero could make a difference, but most of the 500 patients there refuse to participate in any therapy whatsoever. They're on a kind of strike, arguing that it's unconstitutional for them to be locked up at the discretion of the therapists.
But Hedge sought out the therapy. He believes he can change, but not everyone believed in him.
As commander of the San Diego Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement task force, or SAFE, it's Ernie Limone's job to keep track of the 3,800 registered sex offenders in San Diego County. Matthew Hedge was about to become his No. 1 priority.
"I am very concerned that he is gonna reoffend," Limone said. "Some of the statements that he has actually made while he is in Atascadero do concern me."
Hedge was married in prison -- to a woman he met while on parole -- but Limone didn't trust Hedge's claim that he's a changed man.
It was the state mental health department's responsibility to find a place in San Diego -- the place where Hedge first offended -- for him to live.
The highest concentration of registered sex offenders in San Diego County -- more than 300 of them -- live downtown, in ZIP code 92101. It's a popular tourist area, with lots of small cheap motels nearby -- places where a child molester can stay under the radar. It was deemed an unacceptable area for Hedge.
Under the terms of his conditional release, Hedge was not allowed to live with his wife. And once people heard that a sex offender could be moving into their neighborhood, residents were up in arms -- protests against Hedge were angry and frequent.
After almost a year of looking for a place for him to live, authorities were forced back to court while Hedge continued to be held at Atascadero. A judge threatened to release Hedge immediately and unconditionally if a place wasn't found.
Then last fall, they found housing for Hedge -- a fenced-in trailer on state prison property in the middle of the desert.
"It's a terrible location," said Hedge's attorney, Richard Gates, who thinks that isolation is risky. "When feeling isolated and alone, bad thoughts creep into your head, and when bad thoughts start creeping into your head what you really need is to have access to your therapist and to the people that support you so that you can talk about these feelings."
Protests continued, but on Nov. 8 Hedge was released, with a GPS monitor and tracking bracelet cuffed to his ankle.
The first thing Hedge did when he hit San Diego is register as a sex offender. When he arrived at his new home, he was awed by his freedom.
"Just how beautiful it is," he said. "I had a really pretty view in the hospital, but there was always razor wire between me and it. I feel so free right now, so free in eight years."
Moments after Hedge arrived at his new trailer home, law enforcement sent out a press release. It didn't take long for the media helicopters to start buzzing overhead.
Limone and his team alerted the locals about their new neighbor by passing out fliers in the area.
Meanwhile, Hedge and his wife got to see each other for the very first time outside of prison walls. "She is my world now and I love her and I just want to protect her," Hedge said.
The next day Hedge seemed comfortable with the many restrictions he still faced while on conditional release -- including the fact that he could not have visitors after 9 p.m. -- not even his wife.
Hedge spent most of his time in the trailer, doing what he described as his therapy homework.
"It's up to me to think or act or do what I want to do," he said."I have just spent so much time not focusing on children, not focusing on sex. ... I mean, you just change your thinking patterns and you don't automatically go there anymore."
Hedge said that if he came into contact with children, at a mall or store, for example, he would just avoid them.
Over the next few weeks, Hedge began to enjoy his freedom -- having Thanksgiving at his wife's house and seeing his mother, who is ill, for the first time in years.
But he was still under surveillance and not allowed to drive, go to the movies or have a cell phone. He attended therapy at least three times a week, and for a while, attended a work-release program downtown -- until local media, which had been following him, saw children entering the building and confronted him on camera.
It turned out the kids were grandchildren of the manager. Even though Hedge did nothing wrong, the Department of Mental Health barred him from that location.
"There is nothing that could be said to the average man out there. No one understands this illness, this deviance, you know," Hedge said. "All I can say is the day I die, I will have proved that it worked. Until then there is no way. All I can do is prove it each day, one day at a time."
But Hedge doesn't get that chance. The State Department of Mental Health decided to take him back into custody. Hedge had not committed a new crime, but according to state officials, had said things in therapy that made them "uncomfortable." And that's good enough for Ernie Limone of SAFE and many others.
"If they feel he's predisposed to reoffending, then they should send him back to Atascadero," Limone said.
Hedge was disappointed and confused, and for now he is back behind bars, awaiting another second chance. But with a system that can't predict what he'll do with it, and a society not willing to take the risk, he may be waiting a very long time.
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