Obsession (55 page)

Would Stephanie, as naive and good-hearted as she was, have continued working at Hamilton’s had she
known one of her coworkers was a convicted sexual predator? I don’t know the answer to that, and I don’t think her parents do, either.

But would she have gotten into the truck that night with him? Not a chance in hell.

The Schmidts’ civil case is still pending. So far, the defendants have filed motions for summary judgment, which were overruled, except for the Schmidts’ claim that the Department of Corrections’ behavior was reckless to the point of shocking the conscience, thereby rising to the level of a substantive due-process violation. That portion of the case was dismissed. All sides appealed, and realizing that whatever they did would be appealed again, the Kansas Court of Appeals forwarded the case directly to the Kansas Supreme Court, where it currently awaits a ruling. Stanton Samenow has appeared as an expert witness for the Schmidts. Hamilton’s has since closed.

These cases are tough to win because the courts have held that even if the parole officer’s conduct is totally inept and irresponsible, the victim of a crime at the hands of a released offender has no claim unless the parole officer failed to follow his department’s policy and unless there is a specific group, such as co-employees, that easily could have been notified. The Schmidts feel that both circumstances exist in this case.

To illustrate the reason there is a claim when a member of a specific group is injured as compared to someone in the population at large, consider the following analogy Adler used in one of his briefs. If a young boy has chicken pox, it would be impossible to notify everyone in the general public who may have come in contact with him at the grocery store, shopping mall, or elsewhere. However, the parents should notify his day care center or school of the risk to the
children there as these are specific groups that are at risk and can be readily notified.

Through this case the Schmidts hope to once again make new law that will help prevent similar tragedies. They also hope to make state correctional departments responsible for following policies that they have implemented. In this case the Kansas correctional department had apparently determined that when the rights of the offender are balanced with the public safety, it is appropriate to notify employers when co-employees are at risk. Nonetheless, the parole officer did not notify because he thought it might cost Gideon his job. Despite the public outcry for notification and the courts stating that notification is appropriate, correctional departments seem to cling to the notion that employment is more important—as if sex crimes are only committed by the unemployed. We know this to be nonsense! If a rapist is employed, he can easily develop the trust of an array of unsuspecting prey with whom he works.

Why do parole officers seemingly place the offender’s employment above public notification? Perhaps it is simply because they cling to the belief that their job is to “rehabilitate” the offender and not to protect the public. Whatever the reason, if this does not change, these tragedies will happen again and again.

There have been many ways that Stephanie’s absence has been felt by the Schmidt family. Two of the most prominent were the laughter and the music. “We were just used to having a lot of laughter,” Gene says. “And suddenly, it’s gone.”

Jeni adds, “I felt guilty. I didn’t feel like I should be having any fun. I couldn’t enjoy myself if I tried. I also found that music kind of left our lives. It had been a big part of our lives for a long time.”

In spite of these recollections, Stephanie’s friends remember how much Gene and Peggy comforted
them during those long weeks of waiting. Heather Haas says, “They were just there for everybody.”

Eric Rittenhouse adds, “Throughout the whole ordeal, they wanted us all around. We were welcome. And not only that, they made us feel so much at home. It always reminded me of Stephanie.”

It was a year before the Schmidts found themselves laughing again or even able to listen to the music that they had shared with Stephanie. But finally, they decided, if they were to keep her alive in their hearts and souls, they had to be true to her. The quote under Stephanie’s photo in her senior-class high school year-book was “A day without laughter is a wasted day.” For her sake, they resolved not to waste any more days.

But there was more to being true to Stephanie than continuing to delight in the things she delighted in.

Of all the provisions of the Stephanie Schmidt Sexual Predator Act, the most controversial was the one providing for civil commitment of some predators after the completion of their criminal sentences. This is a procedure that many states have looked into, and most were waiting to act until they saw how the Kansas law would hold up in the courts.

The Kansas law was first invoked to civilly commit Leroy Hendricks, an inmate soon scheduled to be released who had a long history of sexually molesting children. The law had established extremely strict guidelines for this commitment of “any person who has been convicted of or charged with a sexually violent offense and who suffers from a mental abnormality or personality disorder which makes that person likely to engage in the predatory acts of sexual violence.” In addition, each case had to be decided on an individual basis by a judge, it had to be routinely reviewed each year, and the person under commitment could demand a special review at virtually any
time. Despite these provisions, the Kansas Supreme Court struck down the act, declaring that it did not meet substantive due-process requirements. The Schmidts got behind a move to have the law reinstated.

Carla Stovall, a young and dynamic former Crawford County prosecutor and herself a graduate of Pittsburg State, is attorney general for the State of Kansas. One of her best friends had also been a homicide victim, which gave her an instant rapport with the Schmidts, whom she met through state representative Gary Haulmark. In fact, while she was running for office, she frequently stayed at the Schmidts’ home and slept in Stephanie’s room, which now functions as the guest room but which remains just as Steph left it, down to troll dolls and McDonald’s Happy Meal toys she used to collect.

“My first thought,” says Stovall, “was, ‘Gee, I don’t know if that’s very healthy for them, to have left the room just the way it was.’ But after staying there in that room, I understood that that’s the only way to have left it, because Stephanie is still such a large part of their lives. She is very much a part of this family and a part, certainly, of our justice system now.”

Stovall’s office filed an appeal to the United States Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case. Accompanied by Gene and Peggy, Jim Blaufuss, and others, Stovall went to Washington and argued the case before the nation’s highest legal tribunal on December 10, 1996.

“For an attorney to have a chance to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court, you do your job as best you can. So I can’t say that I prepared more for this because I cared, but I can certainly tell you the emotional commitment was greater than if it had been a tax case, say, that I was arguing, because Gene and Peggy and Jeni have become such good friends. And
to understand them and what their mission was about—their belief, their courage, their commitment—it became something very special. And for them to have been back there with me the day of the argument is the only way that it was right. If they hadn’t been back there, there would have been a huge chunk missing, because it was their work that we were arguing for. It was Stephanie’s law that we were there asking for.”

Then they all held their collective breath.

The high court handed down its ruling on June 23, 1997. By a five-to-four vote, the law was upheld, meaning it could be reinstated in Kansas and that other states would now consider statutes of their own to protect potential victims of sexual predators. Carla Stovall offered her office’s help in drafting such legislation. In a concurring opinion finding that the Kansas law, with its attendant protections, was within the pattern and tradition of civil confinement, Justice Anthony Kennedy speculated that even the dissent “would validate the Kansas statute as to persons who committed the crime after its enactment, and it might even validate the statute as to Hendricks, assuming a reasonable level of treatment.”

As Stovall pointed out, “During the ten years Hendricks was in a Kansas prison, he refused sex offender treatment. And he said that the only way to guarantee he wasn’t going to molest again was to die. He had a forty-year history of molesting children—little kids, teenagers, boys, girls, family members, strangers. Sometimes the abuse was one time only; other times it lasted for years. Every child in this country was a potential victim of Leroy Hendricks.”

Stanton Samenow says, “I think that it is humane what they’re doing in Kansas. It does protect the community and it puts [predators] in a psychiatric facility. What is the alternative—to let these people out to
molest and possibly kill again when we know we do riot have the tools to effect lasting and permanent change? It’s taken too long to come to this. Changing sexual orientation? I don’t know that anybody knows how to do that. So I think that this was needed and I think if you know the minds of these people, you’re not going to argue with this law and this practice.”

The only thing I would add to this is to ask what message do we send children when we release their tormentors back into the community? By releasing someone like this, we only serve to reinforce his power and his victims’ powerlessness.

When a reporter asked Jeni’s reaction to the Supreme Court victory, she said simply, “Four years too late.” But it was a stunning victory nonetheless.

And on a beautiful summer afternoon about two weeks after the verdict, around the time of Stephanie’s birthday, the Schmidts held a “Supreme Celebration” for hundreds of guests. Their house and backyard were bedecked in red, white, and blue decoration for the occasion. It was the largest gathering there since Stephanie’s funeral.

Carla Stovall spoke and helped Gene, Peggy, and Jeni cut a cake that had been elaborately decorated by one of Stephanie’s friends and former coworkers at the HyVee. The attorney general then presented them with a gift she said she had come across in a craft store in her hometown of Marion, Kansas. It was a homespun angel doll, to add to the sizable collection of angels the Schmidts already had. It was made of muslin, and dressed in muslin, as well, with cotton lace on the bottom, wooden wings, and curly blond hair like Stephanie’s.

The angel is holding a heart, and on the heart is written, “Stephanie Smiled—June 23, 1997”—the date the Supreme Court decision was handed down.

* * *

Despite the differences in age, location, and family status, there are poignant analogies between the Stephanie Schmidt and Destiny Souza murders. Both Katie Souza and Stephanie Schmidt were betrayed by their own goodness and optimistic faith in people. Is there a way to preserve that goodness without sacrificing any more Destinys or Stephanies? What is the lesson here?

I think there is a lesson in the Stephanie Schmidt story for virtually everyone.

The lesson for young women, unfortunately, is that you can’t be too trusting of human nature, that you have to do your best to understand the people around you and not place yourself in situations where your safety is compromised. This is a lot easier to accomplish if you’re given the information you are entitled to have.

For parents, it is important to make your children—both girls and boys—aware and responsible.

For judges, the lesson is to become realistic, as Judge Brewster was, about what these offenders are really like and to use the sentence not only as a means to impose punishment, but as a means to protect the public as well.

For legislators, the lesson is to make sure that someone doesn’t get out after serving only half his sentence merely because he has served “good time.” There has to be a more effective and reliable gauge for determining when, if ever, a prisoner should be paroled.

For corrections officials, the lesson is simply to understand dangerousness and place the critical emphasis on not putting those under your control in a position in which they can hurt other people, once they’ve shown that propensity.

For friends of potential victims—and unfortunately this category includes virtually all women and children and even some men—the lesson is to be aware, look
out, and always be willing to step in. As Eric Ritten-house stated so clearly, knowledge is power, and lack of information is a severe handicap.

And for us, the public at large, we simply have to understand, understand so that we can demand that action be taken in this ongoing war. We have to stop excusing the inexcusable and insist that people be held accountable for their actions. Why is there such a tendency, I continue to wonder, to allow raw cruelty to masquerade as mental illness? It is an insult to the mentally ill to suggest that this is the main reason people commit violent crimes. Sexual predators do have an illness, but it is called a lack of conscience, not insanity.

And we have to examine closely our notions of rehabilitation. As Jeni said on the
Maury Povich
show, “Our government feels that people can be rehabilitated, and they continue to put the experiments out on the public. And I don’t want to be an experiment anymore.”

It would be nice to think that men like Donald Gideon could be “rehabilitated,” that they would understand, as his sister Shannon suggested, that they’d been given a second chance and so couldn’t blow it. But Shannon Gideon didn’t get it. Neither, for that matter, did Gene Schmidt, when he took comfort from the fact that Don had not killed his first rape victim.

By my analysis, Donald Gideon
did
learn from the error of his ways, but not in the manner we would have hoped and the naive among us would have expected. He learned that if you abduct, rape, sodomize, and physically abuse a woman and then let her go, she’s going to turn you in to the police and you’re going to be punished. So if you want to avoid that you can either (a) not do it again or (b) eliminate the witness against you. Clearly, whatever made Don Gideon want to manipulate, dominate, and control
through sexual attack, to feel, in his own words, “the pure power,” had not been “rehabilitated” out of him by prison or therapy or personal resolve to be good.