MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) – Prosecutors want to commit a child molester to a locked psychiatric unit when he leaves state prison next month.
The Hillsborough County Attorney has asked a court for permission to hold child molester Thomas Stephen Hurley, 47, of Manchester, until a civil commitment hearing can be held under the state’s new sexual predator law.
Psychological experts who examined Hurley say he suffers a personality disorder and is very likely to commit new sex crimes.
“The (experts) further cited his manipulative behavior, his lack of impulse control, his disruptive behavior, his poor work history, his lack of remorse for his victims and his lack of empathy for others generally,” the county attorney’s office said in its petition.
Hurley was convicted in 1986 of raping a 10-year-old boy in Manchester and sentenced to serve two 71/2-to-15-year sentences. He also was accused of inviting at least two boys to his home and showing them pornography.
He is scheduled for release from prison July 9. If he is civilly committed after a trial, the state would be obliged to provide sex offender treatment for him.
Records show Hurley signed up for sex offender treatment in prison after his conviction, but was dropped from the program after a few months. Prison officials said they thought he was insincere about changing his behavior.
Hurley, who authorities said had a history of abusing other young boys, has repeatedly asked for a second chance at treatment – even inquiring about the possibility of castration – but prison officials have turned him down.
“I have a right to treatment as anybody else, no matter how slow I am,” he wrote in a 1995 request.
The director of the program, Lance Messinger, replied: “It has been determined that you are unamenable to treatment.”
His sentencing judge, now a justice on the state Supreme Court, twice asked the prison and prosecutors to find an alternative treatment program for Hurley, citing his emotional and mental difficulties.
“The court again exhorts the state to seek an alternative for Mr. Hurley,” then-Superior Judge Linda Dalianis wrote in 1994.
Prosecutors told the Concord Monitor they could not comment Friday.
AP-ES-06-09-07 1512EDT
Send questions/comments to the editors.
