A thrice-convicted rapist with a history of stalking women will be conditionally released next month from the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP), just the fourth sex offender to be discharged in the program's 20-year history.
Benjamin Gissendanner, 68, who raped a woman in an alley in New York City in 1970 and then 11 years later twice raped a St. Paul college student after breaking into her apartment, will be released under strict conditions to a group home in rural Olmsted County. Gissendanner, who has a cognitive disability and multiple mental disorders, including schizophrenia, has a history of stalking women.
According to court records obtained by the Star Tribune, a Supreme Court appeals panel ruled last month that Gissendanner had shown enough progress in treatment at MSOP to be moved to a less-restrictive setting in the community. "Respondent's course of treatment and present mental status indicate that there is no longer a need for treatment and supervision" at MSOP, the judicial panel wrote in its July 6 ruling.
The release of Gissendanner comes as the state weighs dramatic reforms to the sex offender program, which is under legal pressure to demonstrate that it provides offenders genuine treatment and the prospect of release. The MSOP holds about 700 rapists, child molesters and other sex offenders, who have already completed their prison terms, at high-security treatment centers in Moose Lake and St. Peter.
On Monday, Gov. Mark Dayton outlined a plan to spend tens of millions of dollars to create more community treatment centers and conduct regular evaluations of sex offenders, in an attempt to satisfy a federal judge who has declared the program unconstitutional and in need of an overhaul.
Town officials in Rock Dell, a farming community of about 350 near Rochester, did not seem alarmed about Gissendanner's release, largely because of his old age and the isolated setting of his placement in rural Olmsted County.
"We have ways of protecting ourselves out here," said Betsy Kleinwort, township clerk and owner of a cleaning business in Rock Dell. "We all have dogs who are not very friendly to strangers, and almost everyone hunts, so almost everyone has an arsenal of guns. … We are not fearful of the man."
Cathy King, whose farm is about 4 miles from the group home where Gissendanner will live, said his pending release was a topic of conversation at a recent meeting of her book club. Her fellow book club members did not seem worried, she said. "Folks seem willing to withhold judgment until they get all the facts," King said.
