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Friday, February 04, 2000
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Molester could have been halted
An `appalling' gaffe let a man get a job working with children, and he sexually abused seven boys.
By Glenn Puit
Review-Journal
If not for a procedural gaffe by police in Georgia, the molestation of seven boys at the St. Jude's Ranch for Children in Boulder City would have never happened, authorities said Thursday.
Court records indicate Larry Wisenbaker, 34, was convicted in Macon, Ga., in 1996 of cruelty to children after he bound and gagged two boys he was caring for at a shelter. But authorities in Georgia failed to enter the conviction in a national law enforcement computer system, which would have alerted officials at St. Jude's to Wisenbaker's past, Clark County Deputy District Attorney Gerald Gardner said Thursday.
"It's appalling," said Gardner, who prosecuted Wisenbaker. "With all of the dozens of different places we have now traced him to, the odds are there are still more victims out there."
Wisenbaker's attorney, Clark County Public Defender Joseph Abood, said he learned of his client's prior arrest record this week. Abood declined further comment.
Wisenbaker pleaded guilty in District Court on Nov. 30 to seven sex offenses against children -- one count for each boy he molested as a caretaker at St. Jude's. The ranch is a residential treatment center for children who have been abused, many of them sexually.
This morning, Wisenbaker will appear before District Court Judge Kathy Hardcastle, who is expected to sentence him to three life terms, Gardner said. If Hardcastle hands down that sentence, Wisenbaker won't be eligible for parole for at least 45 years, he said.
Wisenbaker was hired at St. Jude's in May 1998 after passing an extensive criminal background check. If an arrest of any significance had come up during the check, Wisenbaker could not have been hired, St. Jude's officials and Boulder City police have said.
While preparing for Wisenbaker's sentencing, Boulder City police Detective Kristine Smallwood said she stumbled across a document on Monday detailing the Georgia arrest on the cruelty charge. She probed further and learned Wisenbaker was also accused of molesting the boys in Georgia, but that charge was dropped.
"Two boys initially complained he was disciplining them by binding and gagging them with duct tape and ropes," Gardner said. "They also said he was fondling them sexually."
Wisenbaker was convicted in Macon on a felony count of cruelty to children, but Smallwood said the conviction was never entered into a national database that details criminal records for law enforcement agencies. If it had, she said, it would have showed up on Wisenbaker's background check.
"When I called the police in Macon and asked them what happened, they told me they didn't start computerizing their records until 1997," Smallwood said, adding that at the time Wisenbaker was hired at St. Jude's, a warrant was also out for his arrest in Macon for violating probation.
"It's infuriating," she said. "He could have been stopped a long, long time ago."
A spokeswoman for the Macon Police Department said she had no knowledge of the case Thursday night. She referred the Review-Journal to court officials there and Wisenbaker's court file. Both were inaccessible Thursday evening.
In Nevada, criminal records have been entered into the national computer system, known as NCIC, by Las Vegas police and the FBI for at least 15 years, Gardner said. It is also a common practice for even the smallest of law enforcement agencies to enter felony convictions into NCIC.
Gardner said the explanation that authorities in Macon didn't computerize their files until a year after Wisenbaker's conviction is unacceptable and doesn't make much sense, especially considering the gravity of the crimes.
"It's hard to believe they did not think it was important to register this guy as an offender," Gardner said. "It would have taken very little effort on their part to enter that information. Macon, Georgia is a city of more than 100,000 people."
Smallwood said she has also tracked Wisenbaker to a boys care home in upstate Massachusetts before his employment in Georgia. Gardner said the parents of three children supervised by Wisenbaker have retained attorneys regarding the case, but no criminal charges have been filed. Shortly after Wisenbaker was arrested in April, Las Vegas authorities learned he was suspected of molesting two boys at the West Texas Boys Ranch in San Angelo, Texas, in the latter months of 1997. Wisenbaker fled the state, and Texas officials didn't pursue the matter.
"I've now tracked him through 15 different states, and he worked (supervising children) in all of them," Smallwood said. "It looks like this is a lot bigger than anyone thought."
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