Judge Blamed For Sending Sex Abuser Home in Md.
By Phuong Ly, Washington Post Staff Writer
Originally published in The Washington Post, August 29, 2002
A Montgomery County judge has angered law enforcement officials by allowing a sex offender to live with the stepdaughter he abused, despite a prosecutor's objection. His return allegedly resulted in further sexual contact that came to light after the girl, now 15, gave birth in November.
Police have been searching since May for the stepfather, Sidney R. Richardson, 51, who is charged with child abuse, a third-degree sex offense and violating probation in the earlier case, which was resolved in March 1998 with guilty pleas.
The current charges stem from alleged sexual contact between Richardson and his stepdaughter after he was released from jail in 1999 and allowed to live with the girl under an order by Circuit Court Judge Durke G. Thompson.
"It's like putting the fox back in the henhouse," said Montgomery police Detective Don Inman, who manages the county's sex offender registry. "Offenders reoffend all the time. This is a classic example of it."
Details of Richardson's case emerged publicly this month when police included him on a new Web site listing fugitives in the county.
Richardson was sentenced to 18 months in jail after pleading guilty to child abuse and a third-degree sex offense for having sexual contact with the girl when she was 9 and 10. In October 1999, after Richardson was released, Thompson allowed him to periodically visit with his wife and stepdaughter, over the objection of an assistant state's attorney. In January 2001, Thompson let Richardson to move back into the family home.
Richardson's wife requested his return, even though Richardson's therapist and probation officer did not endorse the move, according to court records. In November, his stepdaughter gave birth. In May, when the baby was 6 months old, Richardson's wife told authorities that she suspected that her husband had fathered the child. Richardson has been a fugitive since then.
"I'm not responsible for people committing crimes," the judge said yesterday. "Okay, I made a judgment. . . . What do you want me to say, that I'm omniscient and I know what's going to happen in every situation?
"People violate probation all the time," Thompson said. "You want to blame the system? You know what? It's not the system that commits the crimes. … I'm here to make judgments, that's what I'm here for."
Two years ago, Thompson angered women's groups when he reproached the parents of an 11-year-old sexual assault victim during the sentencing hearing for the girl's assailant. "It takes two to tango," Thompson said, referring to the girl's correspondence with men on the Internet before the assault.
Then in March, Thompson, a judge since 1994, created controversy by overturning a jury's guilty verdict in a rape case. Thompson said the victim, an illegal immigrant from Indonesia, might have been seeking revenge against the defendant, who had been her boyfriend, because he refused to marry her.
In Richardson's case, investigators said they believe he fathered the baby based on interviews with the girl and the fact that Richardson cannot be found. They are awaiting the results of a DNA test.
Police and prosecutors said they have seen few sex-crime cases in which an offender on probation is allowed to live with his victim. A county social services official said families are less likely to be recommended for reunification in sex abuse cases than in physical abuse cases because sexual abuse involves behavior that is harder to change.
In March 1998, Richardson pleaded guilty before Thompson to child abuse and a third-degree sex offense for having sexual contact with his stepdaughter over 17 months. He also pleaded guilty to having sexual contact with a young friend of hers. Shortly after he completed his jail sentence, his wife asked the judge to change the conditions of his five-year probation term and allow him to visit the family, according to court documents.
At an October 1999 hearing before Thompson, Assistant State's Attorney Tom Eldridge objected to the request. A probation officer at the hearing said neither he nor Richardson's therapist could support reunification because they had not known Richardson long. The probation officer said Richardson had been to only about three therapy sessions.
But Thompson ordered immediate visits, saying he did not think that a repeat offense was likely.
"This family is suffering right now as a result of all of this, and to just simply say it's Mr. Richardson's fault because he did something wrong … doesn't cure the suffering," Thompson said then.
After Richardson was allowed to move back home, a social worker was not asked to check on the stepdaughter periodically, according to a source familiar with the case. Court documents filed by probation officials say that in April—a month before an arrest warrant was issued for Richardson—his therapist said he had missed sessions and was being suspended from treatment.
"There was obviously a breakdown in what ought to happen here," State's Attorney Douglas F. Gansler said.
