TACOMA, Wash. — Quick Facts:
- Cory Roberts beat and raped 3-year-old girl when he was 13
- At 16, he raped two boys at Echo Glen Children's Center
- Raped a fourth child in 2001
- He was ordered held as a sexually violent predator in 2003
- Roberts getting out of McNeil Island Monday
Kelly McGinnis of Kent still has the newspaper clippings from 1990 detailing how Cory Roberts, then-13 years old, beat and raped McGinnis’ then-3-year-old daughter. The attack was so violent, the little girl suffered permanent brain damage and paralysis, blindness in one eye and a loss of sight in the other.
On Monday, the now-37-year-old Roberts was released from the Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island. McGinnis told KIRO 7 she is furious and fearful.
“You don’t change after you’ve done this,” she told reporter Amy Clancy, while gesturing towards the yellow newspaper articles. “He’s going to be out in public, around small children, around anybody who is vulnerable, and I know he’s going to hurt them,” McGinnis said. “I know he is.”
Roberts was convicted in Benton County for the rape of McGinnis’ daughter. While serving time for that attack at Echo Glen Children’s Center in Snoqualmie, Roberts also raped two boys. For the past 11 years, the King County Prosecutor's Office has been trying to get Roberts civilly committed, possibly for life, as a “Sexually Violent Predator.” But "experts retained by the state concluded that Roberts did not have the kind of "mental abnormality"" necessary "to obtain an order of involuntary civil commitment."
"The crime Roberts was convicted of 24 years ago when he was 13 is among the worst imaginable. We have detained him using a petition under the Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) Civil Commitment statute for the past 11 years, during which time he has constantly litigated and delayed the trial necessary for commitment for treatment within the secure facility on McNeil Island. As we neared the trial date, experts retained by the state concluded that Roberts did not have the kind of “mental abnormality” that we must prove to a jury in order to obtain an order of involuntary civil commitment. Consequently, he was released from the SVP facility and will be under a community supervision mandate from his criminal conviction," said King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg in a statement.
So Roberts was released from custody on Monday and will now live at a home in the 7200 block of South Fawcett Street in Tacoma, where next-door neighbor Sean Murray told Clancy “as long as he (Roberts) stays quiet, doesn’t do anything, doesn’t cause any trouble, I really don’t care, as long as he keeps his distance.”
But Kim Wilson, a grandmother of 2-year-old twins and a 6-year old granddaughter said she’ll be watching Roberts.
“It’s not good” that he’s moving into the neighborhood, Wilson said.
The Tacoma Police Department issued a Sex Offender Information Bulletin about Roberts upon his release. See the bulletin here.
To read why Roberts was not found to be a sexually violent predator, read the document here.
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