The San Mateo Daily Journal reports that the San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury is saying that The County is at greater risk for child sexual abuse because we're just not doing a very good job monitoring sex offenders.
I'm shocked! SHOCKED, I tell you!
According to the article:
Sexual predators are not investigated to the same degree as they were previously and a coordinated countywide effort to monitor sexual predators is inadequate, according to the report.
The civil grand jury report states that the average sex offender will victimize between 50-150 children before coming to the attention of law enforcement and that at least 50 percent of all convicted sexual predators will re-offend.The article reports that because of funding problems, many of the Sheriff's Office programs that used to monitor known sex offenders have been cut, under the management of San Mateo County Sheriff Greg Munks. Good thing we got rid of that guy this past election! (What?? OH... Well, at least he didn't get 100% of the vote right?)
San Mateo County: Come have sex with our children!
The San Mateo civil grand jury is useless. Or, at least the one I testified in front of about the Dr. Ayres case back in February, 2008 appeared to be.
ReplyDeleteBefore my testimony, the grand jury asked me to send them all the documents I had on the Ayres case. They said they were angry that everyone in San Mateo had dropped the ball over the years when victims complained about Ayres- the police; Ayres' partners, Children's Servivces, other therapists.
When I testified in person to the grand jury on the Ayres case in February,2008, they asked for all of the names of doctors who srongly suspected Ayres was molesting boys and did nothing. These names were given to me by the San Mateo Citizens Review Panel.
In the end, they dropped the ball - just like all of the other agencies in the county did - and did nothing. The grand jury said they were too nervous to act on the doctors who stood by and did nothing and told me to go to Steve Wagstaffe.
And oh, yes, the grand jury was also interested to hear that according to the San Mateo District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, former juvenile judge Marta Diaz tried to interfere with the police investigation into Ayres.
But once again, they were too chicken to do anything themselves. They told me to go to the California Attorney General's office.
Of course, that was a different group of people on the grand jury than the one that just put out the report. Maybe this one has more guts. I don't know.
PS: As I said, the lawyers on the San Mateo Citizens Review Panel supplied me with the names of the doctors who didn't report Ayres, and they gave the names to the civil grand jury in February 2008.
ReplyDeleteTwo of the names that were given to the grand jury by the SM Citizens Review Panel were Dr. Etta Bryant and psychologist Al Fricke.
I also know that Etta Bryant's name has been given to an investigator at the California Medical Board for failure to report child abuse.
I DO know (From recent news stories) that the Civil Grand Jury is making recommendations for things that seem to cause consternation with the entrenched politicos in the county.
ReplyDeleteEven if that does equate to having "guts" with this Jury, guts is only half of the story. Gotta have TEETH too.
I'd be surprised if San Mateo County politicos would allow a Jury with guts AND teeth to be seated.
The politicos do not- I believe- have any say over who gets to sit on the civil grand jury. They're just called to serve,as one would be for jury duty. The difference is that they don't go through a voir dire. It's pretty mandatory. Their term lasts several months. I do know that.
ReplyDeletelearned a lot
ReplyDelete