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‘Sexually Violent Predator’ release set for LA County as judge rejects High Desert proposal

Charlie McGee
Victorville Daily Press
Handcuffs, gavel

A judge has rejected a Pennsylvania-based company’s proposal to move a sexually violent predator into the High Desert after decades in prison and mental hospitals for raping teenage girls nearly four decades ago in Southern California and Tennesee. 

Instead, Lawtis Donald Rhoden will be paroled under Liberty Healthcare Corp.’s supervision in Lancaster, a city in one of the counties that Rhoden struck on a spree of sexual violence in the 1980s. 

Orange County Judge Megan L. Wagner issued a ruling late Monday to reject the company’s pitch to place Rhoden, 72, in Newberry Springs. It was Liberty’s second attempt to make Rhoden a High Desert resident in the last year, both of which prompted counter-efforts that are not new to San Bernardino County on the topic of SVP releases.

Liberty holds a lucrative state contract to run California’s conditional release program for jury-designated “SVPs” who serve prison time and finish four of the five phases in a psychiatric treatment program at a high-security facility run by the Department of State Hospitals (DSH).

Communities fight release of rapist 

Rhoden has proven to be a tough client to land a home for in more than two years of Liberty’s efforts.

Liberty sought one of two things:

  1. A “transient” release, where Rhoden would have no residence, which the court rejected due to “Rhoden’s manipulative abilities and high intelligence (reported to have an IQ of 120.” Wagner cited one psychologist describing “an elevated level of criminal sophistication in (Rhoden’s) history” and “opportunities to manipulate around rules” as a transient.
  2. An “extraordinary circumstances” exception that would allow Liberty to look for locations outside of Orange County, which the court approved.

Rhoden originally asked that the court in June 2019 for conditional release to Fresno County after citing a marriage there in October 1984, when he was committing the crimes in question and a few weeks before he left for Texas, according to the ruling.

A court rejected that and found no evidence to suggest Rhoden had a place of address anywhere in California, meaning he was to be placed somewhere in the county where he committed his crimes.

Rhoden was ordered for conditional release somewhere in Orange County with this in mind, though Wagner noted that Los Angeles County also would have sufficed.

However, Liberty said in February this year that after 15 months of searching, it would be impossible for the company to land a place for Rhoden in Orange County.

Liberty first proposed to house him in a Twentynine Palms. The court rejected that location in the face of stiff pushback from officials such as 8th District U.S. Rep. Jay Obernolte, who testified in court against the placement.

The company’s Newberry Springs pitch came next, in late July, and faced more public opposition from local figures such as Barstow Mayor Paul Courtney, whose city is about 21 miles west Newberry Springs, which has a population of just under 3,000. 

The ruling cites a reason specific to Rhoden for this rejection: The proposed Newberry Springs home is roughly 800 feet away from a truck stop frequented by sex workers.

Wagner’s decision Monday finally allowed Liberty to parole Rhoden to Lancaster. 

Crime spree targeting teenagers

Before his crimes in California and Tennessee, Rhoden was convicted in Florida of sexually abusing a child under the age of 14 and sentenced to 14 years in prison. He was on parole from Florida when he committed the California assaults.

A series of different state sentences put Rhoden behind bars in Tennessee and California for sexually violent acts he committed in 1984 against various teenage girls in a less than eight-month period. The crimes included:

  • Kidnapping, robbery, and forcible rape against a 14-year-old girl on April 24 that year in Los Angeles County;
  • Forcible sexual penetration and sexual battery against a girl, 17, around five weeks later in Orange County;
  • Forcible rape against a girl, 14, about two weeks later in LA County again;
  • Unlawful sexual penetration and use of a minor for obscene purposes against a girl, 13, in Davidson County, Tennessee.

Tennessee sentenced him to 20 years in state prison. Rhoden was subsequently extradited to California where an Orange County jury designated him an SVP in March 2006 based on the nature of his crimes against teenagers, Wagner wrote.

A month later, a court ordered that Rhoden be indefinitely committed to Coalinga State Hospital in Fresno County. Coalinga was built specifically for sexually violent criminals and holds about 1,500 beds for an all-male patient population. Wagner noted that Rhoden had remained at Coalinga up to the time of her ruling Monday.

Treatment while in prison, plan for parole 

Rhoden’s “Sex Offender Treatment Program” runs in five phases:

  1. Orientation;
  2. Skills Acquisition;
  3. Skills Application;
  4. Transition/Discharge;
  5. Participation in community-based program (CONREP).

“Rhoden had progressed to the fourth stage by 2012, the ruling states.

Five expert psychologists all endorsed Rhoden's parole, the judge said in the ruling. 

Wagner’s ruling cites another one of the psychologists, a Dr. Goldberg, who said Rhoden would be supervised with GPS-based surveillance and ongoing polygraph tests and if he violated his parole would be sent back to the state hospital. 

These measures, along with courtroom efforts to land SVPs a home and other aspects of the CONREP program, aren’t cheap. The costs fall not on the private company that handles the work, but on California taxpayers.

Liberty is budgeted to get $6.75 million from the state in the current fiscal year, DSH previously told the Daily Press, which is a 3.7% increase from the 2020-21 year that ended June 30.

The amount DSH pays Liberty for CONREP services has risen by $34,000 per client on average in the last two years, its newest budget estimate states. The department expects that 21 SVPs will be conditionally released in the state at an average cost of $344,000 per client.

Charlie McGee covers the city of Barstow and its surrounding communities for the Daily Press. He is also a Report for America corps member with the GroundTruth Project, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization dedicated to supporting the next generation of journalists in the U.S. and around the world. McGee may be reached at 760-955-5341 or cmcgee@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @bycharliemcgee.