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Article Last Updated: Friday, June 27, 2003 - 4:00:20 AM PST

OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS SECTION 8/23/2003 - Money rolls in for some governor candidates - Recall madness an elixir for voter apathy - Parcel taxes save three districts - Police investigate East P.A. shootings - Center keeping workers off streets - School district to oppose power lines - Council to consider revamping Kaiser - Menlo Park - States try to put brakes on aggressive driving - Animal reports from the Peninsula Humane Society - Power company says lines overflowed - White House made EPA slant air reports - U.S. will not cede military power in Iraq - Israel hunting militant leaders - Bush orders freeze on Hamas assets - Europe attempts to count dead - Usual suspects on possible attack list - Engineer, artist Ed Jacobsen dies at 86 - Japanese grocery store operator dies Hundreds of sex offenders to go free Supreme Court ruling will force release of at least half a dozen convicted in San Mateo County, officials say By Emily Fancher, STAFF WRITER San Mateo County prosecutors will be forced to dismiss child molestation charges against six to 10 convicted sex offenders following a U.S. Supreme Court decision Thursday. The decision struck down the California law that retroactively erased the statute of limitations on certain sexual molestation cases. Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said the child molesters will walk free -- with no way of tracking them. "This decision will open the door to sex offenders," he said. The decision means thousands of sexual predators -- and suspected offenders awaiting trial -- will be released throughout the nation. In neighboring Santa Clara County, at least 100 molestation cases are affected, according to prosecutors there. The law that put these offenders behind bars allowed prosecutions for crimes committed long ago, particularly cases involving Catholic clergy. Wayne Presley of Foster City is one of the survivors who is devastated by the decision. The former priest Presley accuses of molesting him, Patrick O'Shea, is in jail awaiting trial for allegedly molesting several young boys in the 1970s, but will be released. "We've been afforded a big slap in the face," said Presley of the ruling. "I'm in total shock." Presley, who is 44 and came forward nine years ago, said he was molested by O'Shea while he was a student at San Francisco's Mission Delores Grammar School. He said he's lost his marriage and his house and nearly his mind as a result of the abuse. "I'm just sorry others will be afraid to come forward now," he said. "The truth won't be told." Wagstaffe said no pending cases of accused Catholic clergy -- including the case of a Daly City priest who was arrested two weeks ago after a 20-year-old woman accused him of molesting her in 1994 and 1995 -- will be affected. Though Wagstaffe said he understood the court's reasoning on a theoretical level, the picture looked different from "down in the trenches." His deputies will have to call up victims and tell them their molesters will be released. "That's not the Ivory Tower," said Wagstaffe. "That's reality, and it makes for a very sad day." California passed a law in 1994 lifting the statute of limitations -- dates after which no prosecutions could occur -- on certain sex crimes. Instead, the law requires only that charges be filed no more than one year after the victim files a police report, no matter how long after the abuse upon which the report is filed. But the high court's 5-4 vote in the case of Marion Stogner of Antioch -- charged in 1998 with having molested his daughters from 1955 to 1973 -- said the Constitution bars states from revising already-expired legal deadlines. The law's critics had argued it's unfair to change the law so cases can be brought long after witnesses have died, memories have faded and evidence has been lost. The law's supporters had claimed child molestation victims often need many years to come to terms with their abuse, so many molesters aren't accused before statutes of limitation expire. Terrie Light of Hayward, Northwest Coast Regional Director for Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said the ruling made her weep. "Today is a day of feeling shattered and disappointed and sad," she said, adding other clergy sex-abuse survivors all over the nation surely feel the same way. Rick Simons, a Hayward lawyer who represents the victims in a case against a Belmont priest, Rev. Don Carter, said the Supreme Court's ruling will not change his lawsuit because it is civil. Contra Costa County District Attorney Robert J. Kochly, whose office brought the Stogner case, said: "Obviously, we're disappointed." "I feel bad for the victims, because this was an unusual statute but one that was a reaction to the conspiracy of silence" around child sexual abuse, he said. "It denies them justice, and in some sense, denies them closure, and that's unfortunate." California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said the ruling "will allow child molesters to escape prosecution simply because they preyed on our children years ago." In addition to sexual-molestation cases, the ruling could apply to the war on terrorism. The Bush administration had argued the USA Patriot Act -- which retroactively withdrew statutes of limitations in terrorism cases involving hijackings, kidnappings, bombings and biological weapons -- could be in jeopardy, too. But Thursday's majority opinion, penned by Justice Stephen Breyer -- a Californian himself -- found "this retroactive application of a later-enacted law is unfair." Justice Anthony Kennedy dissented, joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. States should be able to act against those who prey on children, Kennedy wrote, and predators shouldn't have the comfort of knowing a date on which they've eluded justice. Light, of SNAP, said sexual-abuse survivors are feeling outrage that their predators will evade punishment. "There's a sense of finality, that this is it," said Light of SNAP. "That the cases are overturned, that all that progress toward justice evaporated in a couple of minutes. It is very sad." Staff writers Erin Sherbert and Josh Richman contributed to this report.

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