MODESTO – Erica Farmer and Mindy Bruen exited the Stanislaus County courtroom of Judge Carrie M. Stephens on Tuesday and immediately embraced.
“Our kids are free!” Bruen exclaimed to her fellow Mountain View neighborhood resident.
Moments earlier, Stephens had ruled that convicted child molester Kevin Scott Gray, 74, cannot be released from the Department of State Hospitals into a residence at 400 N. Central Ave., ending a two-year struggle by Mountain View families to have the sexually violent predator placed elsewhere.
“I always thought we’d be successful,” said Farmer, who has three children: an 11-year-old boy and girls ages 7 and 5; their front door is less than 100 yards away from the proposed residence on North Central Avenue. “I think every court date we sort of inched closer and closer.”
Farmer and Bruen have shared stories about neighborhood children afraid to play outside or sleep alone in their bedrooms even though Gray did not yet live in the neighborhood. Now, barring an unlikely reversal, he never will.
Stephens needed 25 minutes to read the complete ruling, which highlighted her concerns with Gray’s potential placement on North Central Avenue.
“A decision about where to place a sexually violent predator is a difficult one that requires balancing many issues; I think we all know that,” said Stephens, who went on to read from the state’s Welfare and Institutions Code. “In recommending a specific placement for community outpatient treatment, the department shall consider the age and profile of the victim or victims in the sexually violent offenses committed by the person subject to placement.”
Gray, whose crimes date back more than 50 years, admitted to molesting 25 children and having committed 1,000 acts of indecent exposure against female victims between the ages of 8 and 11, according to court documents.
Stephens also questioned the thoroughness of the residential inspection conducted by Liberty Healthcare, which oversees the state’s conditional release program for sexually violent predators.
“In conducting their assessment of this site, Liberty did not contact the sheriff to ascertain response-time estimates, no one contacted the Chatom Elementary transportation department to understand the bus schedules, routes, rules and whether any children in the adjacent properties utilize bus service. The failure to do so has caused the information in the site assessment in some regards to be unhelpful and in other regards to be inaccurate.”
The judge sited additional examples.
“Liberty reports that during their site observations, ‘children were infrequently observed,’” Stephens read. “Children are not likely to be observed at parks during school hours of the school day; children are not likely to be observed at a bus stop when the bus is not expected to be there to pick them up. These observations are empty and do not apprise the court or Liberty of the risk to children and families in the community.
“Further, Liberty did not contact any neighboring homes to learn whether children lived in the residences that matched the profile of then children Mr. Gray abused.”
When asked why, a Liberty Healthcare professional replied that it “was not part of their normal process.”
A report released October 2024 by the state auditor was critical of the SVP conditional release program. The audit pointed out DSH’s failures in managing Liberty Healthcare, despite paying the contractor more than $90 million since the program’s inception.
In February 2024, Gray was set to be placed in Ballico — a rural Merced County community just outside of Turlock. However, Stephens reversed the ruling when it was learned the proposed Ballico residence was within one-quarter mile of a home school, a violation of the law.
A renewed search led to the North Central Avenue residence. But it was also too close to a home school. Appeals eventually reached the California Supreme Court, determining that the home school did not meet the technical definition – and the case made its way back to Stanislaus County Superior Court.
District Attorney Jeff Laugero thinks Stephens’ latest ruling will be difficult for an appellate court to overturn.
“All the other information that we’d gathered, as far as the kids that meet the victim profiles that live in the area, the lack of security, what their contingency plans are … all of those things get raised, then the judge takes all that and has to exercise her discretion in determining is public safety going to be adequately protected if we release this person to this location,” said Laugero. “And, clearly not. She came down on the side of public safety prohibiting his placement at this residence.”
In 1974, Gray pleaded guilty in Los Angeles County to one count of child molestation and received 36 months of formal probation. Five years later in Park County, Wyoming, Gray was convicted of one count of having sexual contact with a minor, as well as burglary with intent to commit a felony. In 1986, he was convicted in Stanislaus County for committing lewd acts with an 11-year-old Ceres girl and received an eight-year sentence. In May 1993 he was convicted again in Stanislaus County on two counts of committing lewd acts with a child under the age of 14 and was sentenced to 18 years in prison. He was transferred to the DSH in 2000.
Earlier this month, Stephens denied the release of convicted child molester Timothy Roger Weathers, 63, to the same North Central Avenue residence.
The process to find a more suitable location for conditional release in Stanislaus County will begin anew.
