By Annmarie Timmins
Concord Monitor
HILSBOROUGH, Conn. — Prosecutors tried to chip away at child molester William Ploof’s claims of rehabilitation yesterday with testimony from prison officials who said Ploof was soliciting sex from inmates and touching himself daily while he was in the prison’s sex offender program.
They also called a forensic psychologist to explain how mental health experts used a standard test to conclude Ploof has up to a 40 percent or 50 percent chance of re-offending after release. Ploof’s two prior sexual assault convictions and his claims to have up to 50 sexual assault victims contribute to his high score, according to Dr. Amy Phenix.
Ploof, 49, of Manchester, is on trial in Hillsborough County Superior Court under a new state law that allows the state to keep sex offenders in prison past their sentences if a jury believes they are likely to commit more acts of sexual violence.
Ploof is the first person to stand trial under the law, which took effect in 2007. He finished a 10-year sentence in June 2007 for sexually assaulting a young boy twice and is still incarcerated pending the outcome of the case. If convicted, Ploof will be incarcerated at least five more years for treatment.
Ploof’s public defenders, Lisa Wolford and Tony Sculimbrene, hope to convince jurors that Ploof has reformed himself in prison by learning to recognize his triggers and to stop himself before he violates someone sexually. He developed those abilities, they said, even though he never successfully completed the prison’s sex offender treatment program.
They pointed to questionnaires Ploof filled out in treatment in 2003, saying he had learned to discipline himself and views himself as a good person who made bad choices by sexually assaulting at least 20 children when he was in his 30s.
Prosecutor Michael Valentine focused instead on Ploof’s misbehavior in prison and the fact that his sexual misconduct continued after he described himself as disciplined and controlled in 2003.
Ploof was kicked out of treatment in April 2003 for grabbing another inmate’s crotch, said former prison counselor Paul McAuliffe.
Sgt. Thomas Messina told jurors yesterday that seven months later, Ploof pleaded guilty to soliciting two inmates for sex. And two nurses and a social worker at the prison testified they saw Ploof in 2006 for complaints of constant masturbation, stress and groin irritation.
He told one of the nurses, Carol Delisle, in 2006 that it had been just a year since he had sexual contact in prison.
Prison social worker Heidi Guinen testified that Ploof was referred for mental health counseling at least twice in 2006 and refused therapy both times.
Prison rules prohibit sex between inmates. And the sex offender treatment program discourages daily masturbation, McAuliffe said.
Ploof did not react to the testimony until Sculimbrene asked Guinen whether Ploof’s stress in 2006 could have been connected to the death of his father. Ploof began audibly crying. She said she was not made aware that Ploof had lost his father.
Jurors are expected next to hear from both sides’ mental health experts and what they’ve concluded about Ploof’s likelihood to re- offend. To prepare jurors for that information, Valentine called Phenix to the stand yesterday to explain how a widely used test, the Static-99, is employed to determine a sex offender’s likelihood of re-offending. Phenix, of California, has treated sex offenders in prison and introduced the use of the Static-99 in determining a sex offender’s likelihood of re-offending after release. A state mental health expert scored Ploof as an eight out of 12 on the Static-99. People who score in that range have between a 20 percent and 50 percent chance of re-offending depending on their history, according to court documents.
Phenix did not evaluate Ploof and spoke only generally about the test, which looks at aspects including the number of an offender’s past offenses, his age at release, whether he had a male victim and whether he’s ever had an intimate relationship that lasted more than two years.
The test has proven accurate between 68 percent and 71 percent of the time, Phenix said. It’s not more accurate, she said, because it doesn’t consider other known risk factors or positives such as whether an inmate has succeeded in treatment.
The defense has vigorously challenged the use of the Static-99 as unreliable and a poor predictor of an individual offender’s future behavior. The defense has also pointed to recent studies that have widened the likelihood of re-offending from an exact percentage to a range of percentages.
Under the new analysis, a sex offender may be 20 percent to 40 percent likely to re-offend again, depending on his history, whereas the old interpretation put the percentage at 40 percent.
Judge Gillian Abramson has ruled that the mental health experts who evaluated Ploof for this case may testify how they scored Ploof on the test but may not predict what that score says about his likelihood to re-offend. They can only describe the ranges of risk associated with the score in a general way.
Copyright 2009 Concord Monitor/Sunday Monitor