A teenager who confessed to twice raping his grandmother is going to prison after a clinic specializing in youthful sex offenders said it cannot help the boy.
Broward Circuit Judge Mark Speiser has sentenced the 16-year-old Lauderhill boy to 18 years in prison, followed by two years of community control and eight years probation.
Late last year, Speiser ordered the state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services to come up with a treatment plan for the 16-year-old. The boy had been under suicide watch at the Broward County Jail since his June 11 arrest.
Speiser imposed the prison term Friday after hearing from Katie McBride, head of the Brown Schools of Florida, a Pembroke Pines treatment and rehabilitation center specializing in teenage sex crimes.
“Our program just cannot meet his needs,” said McBride. “We offer an 18-month program, but he needs long-term therapy.”
Speiser called the rape “horrendous” and “despicable” before sentencing the teen. The boy’s identity is being withheld to protect the victim.
The teen, charged as an adult, pleaded guilty in March to three counts of sexual battery and two counts of battery on an elderly person.
Since his arrest, authorities have argued over where to put him. No program in the adult prison system is designed to deal with a sex offender so young.
And though there are a few programs for juvenile offenders, none is capable of handling youngsters charged with the teenager’s crime or with his psychological problems.
Psychiatrists said the boy, who is mildly retarded, is a borderline sociopath. He also is suicidal and dug pencils into his wrists in attempts to kill himself.
His lawyer tried to keep the boy out of jail but acknowledged there was nowhere else to put him.
In a sentencing memo, prosecutor Bob Nichols wrote that the boy’s parents left him at home with his 79-year-old grandmother on June 11, during which time he sodomized and raped her.
His parents got home early and saw him naked from the waist down fleeing the bedroom, the memo says. The grandmother, who has Alzheimer’s disease, and the boy have confirmed both attacks.
The memo also says the boy’s “fantasies often extend into more disturbing areas, (and) he has indicated within the past year that he feels he will become another Jeffrey Dahmer because he fantasizes about killing young kids and having sex with their corpses.”
