BRIDGEWATER, Mass. (AP) – The attorney for a sex offender who escaped from a treatment center said John McIntyre was convinced that attempts to prove he was rehabilitated would never win him his freedom.

Bridgewater police arrested McIntyre, 40, after a brief foot chase ended in a backyard around 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, police said. He was arrested about 1 miles from the Bridgewater Correction Complex he escaped on Sunday.

“He was despairing,” said McIntyre’s attorney, John G. Swomley. “He was thinking he was never going to get out.

“Time passes really slowly in that facility. The thing troubling him included that he did all the treatment and got well-reviewed by government examiners, and despite that his own therapist would not help him get out,” Swomley said. “His sense now is that no one will help him get out.”

Correction Commissioner Michael Maloney said McIntyre’s escape was made possible when an officer on duty failed to react properly when an alarm sounded.

“The investigators have determined that the tower officer failed to follow procedure to notify the control room, the perimeter patrol officer, and to log the alarm,” Maloney said.

One guard at the Bridgewater facility was removed from duty with pay, pending a disciplinary hearing into the matter, prisons spokesman Justin Latini said.

He did not give the guard’s name and did not say when the hearing would be held.

McIntyre was arraigned Tuesday morning at Brockton District Court, where he pleaded innocent to escaping from a penal institution. Judge Richard Savignano ordered him held on $1 million bail and set a pretrial date of Nov. 12, Liz Andrade of the court clerk’s office said.

Bridgewater Detective Sgt. Christopher Delmonte said a town water department worker spotted McIntyre on Summer Street, which leads from the correctional facility, and called police.

Delmonte said McIntyre, who was disoriented, appeared to have been outside for an extended period of time.

“He was dirty. He wasn’t soaking wet but his boots were wet, and he definitely looked like he had been outside,” Delmonte said. The correction facility is surrounded by woods.

Delmonte said McIntyre attempted to flee into a nearby yard when police approached him. He was captured and offered no more resistance, Delmonte said.

Swomley said he and McIntyre’s family were glad that he was safely recaptured. On Monday, Swomley had issued a statement on behalf of McIntyre’s family, in which they asked him to turn himself in out of concern for his safety.

“We were fearful there were people out there looking for him, people who might be trigger-happy,” Swomley said. “We’re quite glad that has not happened.”

McIntyre was civilly committed to the Massachusetts Treatment Center in 1984, at age 21, after he was charged with indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, rape and abuse of a child under 16, kidnapping and larceny.

He escaped late Sunday night from a special unit at the Bridgewater complex designed to prepare inmates for release back into the community. Department of Corrections officials said McIntyre had been a good inmate, but still classified him as a danger to the public.

McIntyre’s escape was the first from the Bridgewater complex since 1990. Officials believe McIntyre used electrical cord or wire to lower himself out of a second floor window of the house where he was living in with four other inmates. He then scaled an 18-foot high fence topped with razor wire.

McIntyre originally came from Worcester and was charged for his crimes in Worcester Superior Court.

AP-ES-10-14-03 1855EDT

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