Island County Sheriff Mike Hawley isn’t happy about a high-risk, 13-year-old sex offender who is living on North Whidbey under some rather unusual circumstances.
“The higher-ups in the state have just dumped him here,” Hawley said. “Something needs to be done and it needs to be done now.”
Nicholas Stroeder, originally an Oak Harbor resident, was released from incarceration Dec. 31 after serving a six-month term for sexually assaulting a pregnant woman at Alderwood Mall. Since then, the boy has been living at the Child Protective Services building just north of Oak Harbor.
Either an off-duty deputy or a social worker has to babysit Stroeder all day long. An off-duty deputy hired by the state at $40 an hour drives him to an Everett crisis center and supervises him overnight, then drives him back to Whidbey in the morning.
The problem, according to Department of Social and Health Services Spokesman Steve Williams, is that the state can’t find anywhere to place Stroeder. No family members will take him in, foster families have refused him and there are no appropriate facilities in the state with openings.
“The situation reflects the difficulty we have in locating housing for kids like this,” Williams said. “We just don’t have enough foster home and not enough appropriate facilities for juvenile sex offenders.”
Although he only just turned 13 years old, the boy has a criminal history serious enough to be deemed a Level 3 sex offender by the county’s sex offender review board. That means he’s considered a high-risk to reoffend.
Stroeder, who is developmentally delayed, set his grandmother’s home on fire when he was 9 years old, according to DSHS reports. He was later placed in a foster home where he allegedly attempted to rape his 9-year-old foster sister. He was also reported to have been sexually aggressive toward other children and women in foster homes and juvenile facilities.
Stroeder pleaded guilty in Snohomish County to indecent liberties with forcible compulsion on July 11, 2001. He went with fellow residents of a group home and a supervisor to the mall in Lynnwood, where he left the group after asking to go to the bathroom. Instead, he went into the women’s restroom and hid in a stall. He then crawled under to a stall occupied by a pregnant woman.
The woman started to scream, but Stroeder put his hand over her mouth. He ordered her to remove her top, but when she refused he pulled her skirt up to her neck and tried to strangle her with it. Another woman heard the woman’s screams and kicked open the stall door. Stroeder struck the rescuer and fled.
Hawley said his office has been handing out fliers about Stroeder in the neighborhood near the CPS building. On Monday, Jan. 7, Hawley is holding a public meeting to discuss Stroeder at 7 p.m. at the Oak Harbor municipal shop.
Hawley said residents have been very concerned about the situation and he expects a large turnout at the meeting.
According to Hawley, Stroeder’s presence at the CPS building “puts our community at a great risk” and doesn’t do the troubled boy any good. Hawley also objects to the way officials at DSHS have handled the situation.
“They basically tried to sneak the kid in here and not deal with it,” he said. “The CPS staff is angry and scared.”
Hawley says DSHS hasn’t followed sex offender registration laws. The Sheriff’s Office did not receive a 14-day notification that Stroeder was moving to the county, which is required by law. The boy didn’t even come to the Sheriff’s Office to register until a deputy brought him in.
Hawley says he’s also “outraged as a taxpayer” at the amount of money DSHS is paying to supervise the boy around the clock.
Williams admits that “this is not a good solution,” but he says it’s only temporary and there really isn’t any other choice. He says DSHS officials are currently looking at juvenile facilities in Idaho and Oregon. Stroeder will likely be moved to one by mid-January.
“This is something that happens every once in a while,” he said. “It’s an ongoing problem in the state. … We don’t like this any more than anyone else does.”
