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Molester Insanity Defense Rejected: PROLIFIC CHILD ABUSER MUSES ON LIFE IN PRISON

Posted on: Friday, 12 May 2006, 12:04 CDT

By Dan Reed, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

May 12--Convicted child molester Frederick Everts knows he'll be locked up the rest of his life. And he thinks that may not be such a bad thing.

If it's "what it takes to not hurt someone, then that's what I'll do," Everts said recently from the main jail in San Jose.

While that was an honorable sentiment, he really didn't have much say in the matter.

Everts, 35, is facing up to 1,175 years to life in state prison -- where, Everts said in the interview, he fears inmates will hurt him for being a child molester.

Thursday, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Alfonso Fernandez rejected Everts' bid to instead be found not guilty by reason of insanity and be confined to a psychiatric hospital.

At the end of a two-day hearing, Fernandez simply said: "I find the defendant Mr. Everts was sane at the time of the commissions of these offenses."

Fernandez, who in February found Everts guilty of 18 criminal counts, is to sentence him June 30 -- a penalty that probably will range from hundreds of years to more than 1,000 years.

Everts -- who admitted in the interview to molesting 12 children, nine in Oregon and three in San Jose -- was the housemate of Dean Schwartzmiller, reputed to be one of the most-prolific child molesters in the nation's history.

During 35 years, Schwartzmiller has been arrested on more than 80 counts of child molestation involving at least 13 boys in five states. He was convicted on nine of those counts, and four were eventually overturned by appeals courts.

Schwartzmiller, accused of sexually abusing two 12-year-old cousins in San Jose, is in jail awaiting his July 3 trial.

In the wide-ranging interview two weeks ago, Everts -- his left hand shackled at the waist and his right hand free to talk on the jail phone -- seemed, in some ways, to be rehearsing for his insanity defense hearing.

He said his first impulse to molest arrived when he was 10 or 11. His favored prey have always been "prepubescent males."

He said he tries to resist the temptations. "Sometimes I'm successful," he said. "Sometimes my mind gets racing. These thoughts coming too fast. They're telling me it's all right. And there's a physical urge to do it."

And he justifies it in his mind. "When I molest, it's all right," he said. "The kid thinks it's OK."

Route to victims

He said he never went out and trolled for children, although sometimes he would go to malls to look at them. Those he molested crossed into his life, such as his stepson, whom he molested when the boy was 6, and his own son, whom he molested as an infant.

"I feel horrible after it," he said, "but when I do molest, I don't think."

Shortly after sexually abusing his son, Everts said, he talked to another molester about seeing a therapist. The man told him the counselor would have to report him to the police. So, he said, he turned himself in and confessed all.

That was in 1993. And while in jail in Multnomah County, Ore., he found a friend: Schwartzmiller, also inside for molestation charges.

It was "my first time being incarcerated," Everts recalled. "I was upset and nervous. He calmed me down and showed me around."

They met up again in prison -- Everts serving a six-year stint -- and their friendship grew during the year before Schwartzmiller was transferred away.

In November 1999, both men had served their time -- and both violated their parole, so they wound up in the same county jail again.

"Where Dean goes, I go," said Everts a bit ruefully.

About five years ago, Everts joined Schwartzmiller in San Jose, where he had found a house and work as a plasterer, long his trade.

Each also fell back into their old molesting ways: They ingratiated themselves with a local family, showering the boys with gifts and seemingly avuncular attention.

In the interview, Everts cast himself as the good guy -- or at least compared with Schwartzmiller.

"He bought them things and took them places," Everts said, "but he wouldn't take no for an answer when he wanted to touch them." Everts, though, said he had never forced himself on the boys.

While in jail in San Jose, Everts was diagnosed as manic-depressive. This became the crux of his insanity defense. In the interview, and in court, he said that while in the manic stage he finds nothing wrong with molesting.

Mel Gibson delusions

He even testified that after Mel Gibson made several movies with boys, that he assumed -- in his manic moments -- that Gibson was molesting the children and society was fine with that.

"Some people can't control their behavior," Everts said in the jail interview. "And if I can't control my behavior, then I should be found not guilty by reason of insanity."

But Santa Clara County prosecutor Steve Fein wasn't buying it. And neither were the three doctors who examined him.

In California, a defendant only needs to know the difference between right and wrong to be proved sane. And Everts has oft told of his remorse over exploiting children.

Alfonso Lopez, Everts' attorney, knew he had a slim chance for success. He asked the judge to consider protections beyond state law, to invoke due process and equal-protection provisions in the U.S. Constitution.

It didn't work. And Lopez understands why the judge decided as he did.

"His hands were tied," Lopez said after the hearing.

Contact Dan Reed at dreed@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5771.

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Copyright (c) 2006, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

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Source: San Jose Mercury News

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