The scheduled release of a convicted child rapist from prison has been put on hold until a Riverside County Superior Court judge can determine whether David Stephen Jakubowski should be committed to a state hospital as a sexually violent predator.
Jakubowski, 23, was convicted of two counts of child rape and sentenced in March 2016 to 10 years in prison for raping a boy at a Riverside County foster home in September 2015. He was scheduled for release from Valley State Prison in Chowchilla on Monday, Sept. 6, but that was put on on hold, said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
“He’s not getting paroled,” Thornton said, adding that Jakubowski is still technically a CDCR prisoner. He was transferred Saturday morning, Sept. 4, to the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside, where he was booked at 3:08 p.m. and held without bail, according to Riverside County online booking records.
A spokesman at the District Attorney’s Office said sexually violent predator proceedings are confidential, and he therefore could not comment on the case.
“I can only confirm that he is here and that we are seeking a Sexually Violent Predator commitment,” John Hall said in an email.
If a district attorney files a petition for commitment of an individual as a sexually violent predator, mental health evaluators are called to provide expert testimony at court hearings. A Superior Court judge reviews the petition and determines if it supports a finding of probable cause, and can require the individual to be held at a state hospital pending a court hearing or a trial to determine whether the inmate poses a danger to the health and safety of others, according to the Department of State Hospitals.
A federal lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Riverside in July alleges that more than a half-dozen social workers and their supervisors were involved in placing Jakubowski into foster homes across the Inland Empire from January 2009 through January 2015. They worked with foster family agencies, but failed to inform the agencies and foster parents that Jakubowski had a proclivity for sexually inappropriate conduct with young boys since the age of 9.
It enabled Jakubowski to sexually assault a total of five boys at two foster homes over a five-year period. Twice, law enforcement intervened. And twice, Jakubowski was convicted of child rape, once as a juvenile and once as an adult.
Officials at the Riverside County Department of Social Services have declined comment.
In November 2019, Riverside County settled a lawsuit for $2.9 million with Jakubowski’s victim from 2015. The lead attorney who represented the victim in that case, Shawn McMillan, is the same lawyer who filed the federal lawsuit in July on behalf of two brothers who were raped by Jakubowski at their Hemet home in 2011 and 2012.
According to the federal lawsuit, Jakubowski would lock his foster brothers in the bedroom, place a mattress over the door so they couldn’t escape and rape them. He punched and kicked them and held them down if they tried to get away, threatening to stab or assault them if they told anyone. One of the victims reported the abuse to his mother, who in turn called the police in January 2013.
Jakubowski, then 15 years old, admitted his crimes to then Riverside County sheriff’s Sgt. Rene McNish during a March 2013 interview, McNish said in a declaration filed in federal court in connection with the lawsuit.
Jakubowski pleaded guilty in April 2013 to five felony counts of child rape. A judge declared him a ward of the court, and Jakubowski was placed in a residential youth treatment facility in Apple Valley, where he spent less than two years in custody, according to the lawsuit.
McNish said in his declaration that the most chilling part of his interview with the troubled teen came toward the end of it.
“When I asked David if he were left alone with another unsuspecting young boy, would he sexually assault that child, he coolly answered, ‘yes,’ ” McNish said.
Convicted child rapist’s release from prison halted pending judicial review - OCRegister
Read More
No comments:
Post a Comment