A twice-convicted rapist with a history of assaults against women is about to be released from the state's secure sex offender treatment program to a halfway house in St. Paul.
Oliver Lenell Dority, 50, who sexually assaulted a woman in 1994 after hiding in the back seat of her car at a gas station, is the latest in a growing number of violent offenders who have been approved by state judges for conditional release since the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) came under intense federal court pressure for failing to adequately move people toward release.
In just over a year, six offenders have been conditionally discharged from MSOP — an unprecedented pace for a program with a history of confining rapists and other violent offenders indefinitely, sometimes for decades, with little opportunity for release.
The releases reflect a loosening of Minnesota's notoriously rigid and labyrinthine process for determining which MSOP clients are appropriate for release, with state officials and judges showing more willingness to discharge people with violent histories and some risk factors for reoffending.
The releases are also arousing far less political controversy than in years past — reflecting a possible easing of attitudes toward offenders, say experts.
All of the offenders approved for discharge over the past year are repeat rapists.
They include Robert Jeno, who sexually assaulted two women while he was a teenager; Benjamin Gissendanner, who twice raped a St. Paul college student after breaking into her apartment, and Christopher R. Coker, who raped three teenage girls in separate incidents in the early 1990s.
The commissioner of Human Services plans to appeal Coker's discharge, saying experts do not believe he is ready for release into the community.
