Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

Pearl City
residents resist
treatment center

The state plans a temporary
juvenile sex offender facility
to fulfill the Felix decree

By Harold Morse
Star-Bulletin

Chris Bayot, a member of the Momilani Elementary School Parent Teacher Student Association, is one of many parents who do not want a juvenile sex offender treatment center at Waimano Training School and Hospital -- even temporarily.

"I do not in any way agree with the temporary facility," she told Bruce Anderson, state health director. "If it doesn't belong there two years from now, it doesn't belong there right now," she said. "I don't trust that temporary situation. My answer is still no -- not now, not ever."

Anderson told residents at a meeting called by the Pearl City Community Association that Gov. Ben Cayetano is committed to finding another location for the treatment center, but that the facility had to open temporarily at Waimano. Cayetano will request up to $5 million in the executive budget to build a new facility somewhere else, Anderson said. An informal site search has already gone on, and a contractor will be engaged to pick a site by January, Anderson said.

"The governor's commitment is that it will (eventually) be somewhere else," he added.

Anderson said once the sex offenders are out of Building 5 at the Waimano site, residents can help draft a new Waimano master plan, he said.

But residents told Anderson the state has a serious credibility problem in the Pearl City community because of the controversy over the sex offender treatment center. Residents said the state was slow to inform the community about the facility, and the residents objected to the way the controversy was handled.

Anderson said everyone has learned from the experience, and encouraged continued active community involvement. He also assured residents there are no plans to house families of sex offenders near the treatment center.

Questions on how the program will work may be addressed to Benchmark, the contractor picked to run the program, he said. "They are actually providing services to a few of these kids now on the mainland."

Gary Okino, a leader of the Pearl City/Aiea Vision Team, wanted the state to keep the six or seven sex offenders now receiving treatment on the mainland where they are. Don't bring them back until an alternative facility is ready for them somewhere out of Pearl City, he said. "I'm very uncomfortable because it's easy for temporary to become permanent," he said.

Anderson said there are two reasons why Hawaii juvenile sex offenders receiving treatment elsewhere need to be returned to Hawaii as soon as possible: "It's the right thing to do for the kids, and it's required by federal law to bring these kids back here."

The state says it is necessary to open the Waimano facility to meet time constraints under the 1994 Felix consent decree, which requires upgraded mental health treatment for students.

"We need to comply with the Felix consent decree and do what we can for these kids," Anderson said.

The six or seven juvenile sex offenders now on the mainland have a history of having sex with family members or other close relatives, Anderson said. Bringing them back to Hawaii will enable the state to treat not only the offenders, but also their families, he said.

"We do expect to admit the first children into the treatment program in late August or early September of this year," Anderson said. He described Building 5 at Waimano as a state-of-the-art facility secured by electronic locks and fencing. "There's no better facility anywhere in the country," he said.

Rep. Noboru Yonamine (D, Pearl City) said the governor's commitment to eventually locate the facility elsewhere is a partial victory. "My belief right now is that when he gives his word, he will keep it," Yonamine said.

But state Sen. Sam Slom (R, Hawaii Kai) complained the state had years to comply with Felix requirements but did not.

"This is the wrong place and the wrong time and the wrong action," Slom said.

"The idea about an alternative site now is putting the horse behind the cart," he said.