Release of 100 yr old child molester, Theodore Sypnier/ Daughter wants him confined for life/Mental Health Commissioner Michael F. Hogan says Sypnier does not meet the criteria for civil confinement - the cost is too high!

Release of 100-year-old molester causes concern in western New York
By The Associated Press
December 10, 2009, 3:51PM
Everything that pedophile Theodore Sypnier has to show for his 100 years on Earth is packed in a single duffel bag as he prepares to begin a new chapter in life: freedom.

New York State sex offenders registry/The Associated PressTheodore Sypnier 'has an unrepentant heart,' a halfway house director says.It's a chapter that prosecutors, judges and others who know him never wanted -- or expected -- to see written.

New York's oldest registered sex offender is scheduled to move by week's end out of a Buffalo halfway house for released inmates and into a place of his own, after completing his latest term in state prison for molesting little girls.

The judge who sentenced him said at the time that she expected him to die behind bars.

But 10 years after his last arrest, as Sypnier prepared to shed the closely monitored lifestyle of the halfway house, its director warned that the spry and active Sypnier has not changed from the manipulator who used his grandfatherly charm to snare and rape victims as young as 4.

"Whether he's 100 or 101 or 105, the same person that was committing these crimes 10, 25, 30 years ago still exists today and has an unrepentant heart," said the Rev. Terry King, director of Grace House, which has twice taken Sypnier in from prison. "He is someone that we as parents, as members of the community, any community, really need to fear."

Six months after marking his 100th birthday in the Groveland Correctional Facility -- becoming the first New York inmate to reach the milestone while incarcerated-- the retired telephone company worker now says he wants to get to know the youngest members of a family that has disowned him.

"I'll tell them I never harmed any children," the father, grandfather and great-grandfather told his hometown newspaper, The Buffalo News.

A former daughter-in-law said he is not likely to get the chance.

"No one from the family plans to have any contact with him," Diane Sypnier said before ending a brief phone interview.

Being grandfatherly was how the 5-foot-5, 150-pound Sypnier found his victims, authorities say. After his most recent arrest at age 90 on charges of raping and sodomizing a 4-year-old girl and her 7-year-old sister, his neighbors in the suburb of Tonawanda recalled what appeared to be a kindly Sypnier offering rides to adults, handing out money to children so they could buy candy, and baby-sitting.

The victimized sisters called him "Grandpa," their mother said at the time, adding that it "was a total shock" when police showed her sexually explicit pictures of her girls found in Sypnier's apartment.

Sypnier's convictions date to 1987, when he was given three years' probation for sex abuse. He spent a year in prison for sexually abusing a minor in 1994. His neighbors in Tonawanda never knew of Sypnier's background because he was convicted before the adoption of laws requiring sex offenders to register with police.

A relative once came forward and said Sypnier had molested her while she was growing up, former Erie County prosecutor Frank Clark told the News. Authorities wonder what else might lie in Sypnier's past.

"People don't start to become pedophiles at 78," Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita told the AP. "I call them vampires. ... This is something that's deep inside of them, and they won't want to stop doing this until they're dead."

But Sypnier says he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice, despite twice pleading guilty in the case involving the sisters.

"Those children crawled into bed with me because they were frightened, but there was never any sexual hanky-panky," Sypnier told the News.

Sypnier initially pleaded guilty in 2000 to two counts of rape, 15 counts of sodomy and endangering the welfare of a child for molesting the Tonawanda girls, as well as three in Buffalo. An appeals court threw out the conviction in 2002 after Sypnier claimed he was confused at the time, leading to another plea the following year to a lesser charge.

In sentencing Sypnier to as many as 10 years in prison, state Supreme Court Justice Penny Wolfgang told him she expected he would spend the rest of his life behind bars.

"The sheer notion of him wandering the streets unattended or unsupervised is a scary proposition," King said.

Sypnier was released on parole in 2007, only to be returned to prison in 2008 after failing to attend sex-offender counseling. He completed his term in November and will be on parole through 2012. Until then, he's forbidden from using e-mail, chat rooms or social networking sites, hanging around playgrounds or schools, or spending time in bars.

Instead, he spends his days watching television, cooking, socializing in the halfway house and attending programming, King said.

Sypnier's new address has not been disclosed, but the law requires him to enter it in the state's sex offender registry.

Although his age makes him New York's oldest registered sex offender, there is at least one older offender elsewhere. Bert Jackson of Utah is 103 and living under home confinement.

Carolyn Thompson of The Associated Press wrote this report.

omg, and why are they releasing him??? :pale:

This geezer will probably try it again. He knows his time is limited so why not give it another shot since he probably wont live much longer. Hopefully his old age lows him down from doing so. Ya just never know these days

Old age obviously doesn't slow him down. He should not be within a mile of any children. If this doesn't prove pedophiles never change or get cured I don't know what does. I'll bet he has been harming children for most of his 100 years.

He raped children when he was 90 yrs old and they let him out?

lindamarie wrote: He raped children when he was 90 yrs old and they let him out?

Yeah, the judge thought he would die in jail when he was sentenced to 10 yrs. Someone should have made sure of it....

I saw this on HLN. He is staying at a halfway house run by a minister and even the minister says he can still walk and will do it again. Disgusting!!

hes completed his term, time served, thats why hes being released. my guess is that he won't last too long. he had a home in that halfway house and they have sent him away and he will be living alone. hes probably going to start wishing he could go back.

im sorry to say that there is a risk he will do it again yes, thats why we need longer sentences for sex offenders. i think theives get more time.

freak

laga wrote:Old age obviously doesn't slow him down. He should not be within a mile of any children. If this doesn't prove pedophiles never change or get cured I don't know what does. I'll bet he has been harming children for most of his 100 years.

I totally agree with you laga! They never change and it probably got easier for him because people thought he was just a harmless old man.

Several local lawmakers are now questioning the handling of a 100-year-old sex offender recently released from prison.

Theodore Sypnier is currently living at Hennigan House, a rooming house for sex offenders on Seneca Street in Buffalo.

Assembly member Sam Hoyt and several others want to know why Sypnier, a three time sex offender, was not considered for civil confinement.

That law allows the state to place sex offenders who are determined to have a "mental abnormality" in a secure setting following their release from prison. Despite his age state officials say Sypnier is still considered a threat.http://www.wivb.com/dpp/news/crime/Lawmakers-want-answers-about-molester

The youngest daughter of a 100-year-old pedophile and an assemblyman are asking the state attorney general to begin court actions to commit the high-risk sexual predator to civil confinement for life.

Theodore A. Sypnier, who has a 60-year history of molesting children, wants to be released back into the community and has been bouncing back-and-forth from one halfway house to another as state parole officials figure out what to do with him.

"I don't think people understand what kind of a menace he is, the way we understand as someone who was his victim and someone who lived with him on a day-to-day basis," his daughter told The Buffalo News.

"These bureaucrats look at the paperwork put in front of them, but they can't make a considered and an appropriate judgment until they take into consideration what the man is.

Released from prison last month after serving 15 months on a parole violation, Sypnier was sent to a South Buffalo halfway house Monday, but by Tuesday, he was scheduled to be returned to an East Side halfway house that maintains closer supervision of parolees.

Several other state lawmakers have sent a letter to Michael F. Hogan, commissioner of the state's Office of Mental Health, urging his staff to reconsider recommending Sypnier for civil confinement.

Officials at the Office of Mental Health have declined to comment on the case, citing Sypnier's legal rights to "privacy and confidentiality."

Under the civil confinement law, the office determines whether a sex offender has a mental abnormality that would, for legal proceedings, lead to lifetime confinement.

Sypnier's daughter, who is 57, says it is hard to believe that the state would not recommend her father for confinement. That is why she shared her story of being sexually abused by him with The News on Tuesday.

"I've actually witnessed him raping children when I was a child, and I was one of his victims," the daughter said of events that occurred more than five decades ago. "He would do this in our home in my bedroom. The adult relatives would come over to our home, and there would be these drunken parties, and that's when it happened. It wasn't just him. There were two other adult relatives who did it, too.

"He would come in my bedroom and rape another child who was spending the night, and I would have to comfort her after it was done."

Hoping for DA's help

Requesting that her name be withheld out of consideration for relatives who still live in the area, she said that her father was known to practice black magic in the family's former Royal Avenue home in Riverside in order to seduce his young victims.

"There was a time when he engaged in black magic, and I'm not making this up, and I found out about it when I was a young wife and mother," the daughter said. "I went over to the house for some reason and found snips of hair, and I asked him about it, and he told me, "Well, I'm using black magic to get what I want.' He told me the little lock of hair was from a girl from across the street.

"When he told me that, it was very matter-of-fact. I was enraged, and I took everything I saw, including this lock of hair, and took it from the house and destroyed it, and I told him that this is absolutely evil. I got really, really frightened."

The woman, who is the mother of two grown children, says that in addition to contacting the attorney general's office, she has already spoken with her father's parole officer and plans to call the Erie County district attorney's office to urge civil confinement.

Through the years, she and an older sister have spoken with the DA's office about having their father remain incarcerated. District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III has said his office has been in contact with the family.

Citing anger, danger

Assemblyman James P. Hayes, an Amherst Republican who cited Sypnier when making a case for the proposed civil confinement law back in 2004, said he is at a loss to explain why the Office of Mental Health did not recommend the centenarian for civil confinement when he was released from prison on the parole violation — refusal to attend sex-offender counseling.

"I am petitioning State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo today asking him to personally review Sypnier's case," Hayes said Tuesday. "If it is within his discretion, ... bring a petition to Supreme Court seeking Sypnier's civil confinement."

Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, D-Buffalo, issued a statement on behalf of several area Democratic state lawmakers Tuesday urging the Office of Mental Health to take appropriate actions against Sypnier.

"The civil confinement law of 2007 was established in order to deal with those sex offenders who suffer from a mental abnormality and present a real threat to the community," Hoyt said. "Mr. Sypnier's three convictions, parole violation and expressed desire to be in contact with children all seem to qualify him for consideration for civil management under New York State law."

In the last two years, 100 sex offenders in the state have received civil confinement after completing their prison sentences. They can end up at a state psychiatric facility or, in some cases, on intensive supervised parole.

Sypnier's daughter says state mental health officials in Albany have no idea how dangerous her father is to children.

"I know that man. I know firsthand the depth of his character and the evil that is in him," the daughter said. "He is angry now, and he is on the loose. He is extremely dangerous when he is angry."

"Slaps on the wrist'

She bases her contention that her father is angry on the fact that he has publicly stated he wants to take legal action to get the parole portion of his sentence dismissed. It was imposed along with eight years in prison on charges that he molested two young Town of Tonawanda sisters in 1999. He also insists he never sexually abused any children.

"This is one thing that has frustrated our family for years and years and years — slaps on the wrist. Because he hasn't been taken seriously, more and more children have been harmed, and it has got to stop now," the daughter said, her voice rising.

Sypnier remains on parole until May 16, 2012.

Prior to serving eight years in prison for the Town of Tonawanda offense, he had served a year in jail for sexually abusing a minor, and before that, he served three years' probation for a sex-abuse conviction. He says he was innocent in all three cases, contending that mothers of the children were trying to extort money from him.

When the retired telephone company worker refused to pay, he said, they trumped up false child sex-abuse charges against him.

Although every day of her life is haunted by being repeatedly raped by her father, the daughter said, she decided early on not to be one of his victims.

"It was my goal to define my own life on my own terms, not his," she said.

"I went on to obtain a college degree and have a professional career. Too often, people who are victimized in this way are damaged for life, and I just determined it was not going to be that way for me.

"I was going to have a life. I was going to see happiness and beauty in the world, and I believe I've achieved that."

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The state's oldest sex offender spent a few days on his own in a boarding house apartment, but he has been sent back to constant supervision.

Theodore Sypnier was released from Groveland Correctional Facility earlier this month and spent several days at the Saving Grace Ministries' Grace House on Bailey Avenue in Buffalo. It is a halfway house for inmates making the transition back to every day life.

Sypnier was expected to go from Grace House to a room in a boarding house on Seneca Street near Swan. Shortly after the move though, NY State Parole officials decided that it was not the most appropriate location because of his ability to come and go as he pleases. They requested that he be returned to Grace House where he can be watched 24 hours a day.

The move comes amid intense public scrutiny of his release. Sypnier is a multiple offense felon. He plead guilty to molesting two young girls in Tonawanda in 2000.

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My heart is pounding and I feel sick to my stomach. This is what happens when you spend a half-hour talking to the daughter of Ted Sypnier.

Sypnier is the 100-year-old pedophile who within days will walk out of a Buffalo halfway house. The white-haired great-grandfather has been convicted at least twice of molesting children, is accused of abuse by his daughter and is suspected of molesting many other kids over six decades. Authorities say he is likely to strike again.

Sypnier told The News last week that he never harmed a child and is falsely accused. I spoke with someone who disputes that claim with her heart and soul: His daughter. She is 70 and lives in the Northtowns. She was able—despite years of abuse—to get married and have a family. She spoke on condition that I not use her name.

She said Sypnier often threw her against a wall or beat her and her four siblings with a belt. She remembers hiding her developing body under baggy clothes from his “leering eyes” and “dirty-mouth” comments. “It made me feel filthy,” she said. “I would avoid being alone in a room with him.”

Fifty years after he last touched her, she remains a casualty. Her words come in fits and starts. Recent stories reopened old wounds. She has trouble sleeping and takes medication for her nerves. Sypnier has spent most of this decade in jail. She—like all of his victims— got a life sentence.

Although she remembers his physical and verbal abuse, she is spared the memory of his sexual abuse because she was so young when it occurred. But she said that her mother, when on her deathbed, confided to a relative that Sypnier sexually molested her daughter as an infant and toddler. Upon discovering this, her mother vowed to protect the children from further molestation.

“But he physically assaulted me until a week before I was married,” she said. “He’s a maniac.” She said he came to her house about 15 years ago and told her he abused many children.

“He said he got these children to sign a paper giving him ‘permission’ to do what he was going to do,” she said. “He called them his ‘permission slips.’ These were just children.” She went to the police with the information. He served a year in jail in 1994 for sexually abusing a minor. In 2000, he admitted to molesting two sisters, ages 4 and 7.

Sex offenders can be kept off the streets after doing time if they have an abnormality that makes them likely to strike again. For reasons she cannot understand, state officials did not use the “civil confinement” law on Sypnier—a decision she hopes they reconsider. I second the emotion.

Age means nothing. Sypnier remains an unrepentant menace. The civil confinement law ought to have his picture on it. He still has the power to damage a child, who will carry the scars long after he is gone. That will be his twisted legacy, if we allow it.

“He is never going to change his ways,” she said. “He told me, ‘Nobody is going to tell me what to do—ever.’ ”

Sypnier’s daughter told me he abused children when they lived at the Sheridan- Parkside housing project a half-century ago. She recalls police sometimes coming to the door, whispered conversations, and soon after a family would leave. “They would drop the charges and move,” she said, “rather than have the kids go to court.”

To this day, she carries the scars of his abuse. She fears men and has trouble trusting people. Her problems are the bitter fruit of a tree that was poisoned by her own father. Multiply that damage times every child Sypnier ever abused.

“I would like to see him dead,” she said. “Until that happens, he needs to be off the street. He looks harmless but, please, people need to look beyond that. He is a threat.” Consider it testimony. From an expert witness.

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A 17-year-old girl repeatedly molested a decade ago by Theodore A. Sypnier says state officials have an obligation to move forward with civil confinement proceedings against the now 100-year-old pedophile.

“He’s not all there. He’s not completely sane, not even half sane, because to this day, 10 years later, he is still denying the facts,” the teenager told The Buffalo News, requesting that her name be withheld. “He knows they’re true as well as I do, that he molested me and my little sister.”

The teenager added that she would be willing to meet with state Office of Mental Health officials in an attempt to persuade them to reconsider their decision that has allowed Sypnier to avoid civil confinement for life.

Twice in the last three years, officials with the state office have ruled that Sypnier, who has a lengthy history of sexually molesting children, does not have a mental abnormality that would call for civil management.

Sypnier was sentenced in 2000 to eight years in state prison after pleading guilty to a reduced charge stemming from sexual attacks on the girl and her sister when they were 7 and 4 in the Sheridan Parkside section of the Town of Tonawanda, where they were all neighbors.

The teenager and her stepmother contacted The News after Sypnier made statements in the last couple of weeks contending that the two sisters and other children, whom authorities say he molested, had lied and were blackmailing him.

Sypnier, a retired telephone company worker who travels by public transportation, was released last month from prison after serving 15 additional months behind bars for a parole violation — failure to attend sex-offender counseling classes.

The stepmother and her stepdaughter say they fear that Sypnier could harm other children if he is released into an apartment and living on his own.

Sypnier has said he wants to be released from an East Side halfway house and live independently. He also says he wants to hire an attorney to have the final two years of his parole lifted, contending that it was never part of his original sentence.

Several state lawmakers from the Buffalo area want Mental Health Commissioner Michael F. Hogan to step in and re-evaluate his office’s decision that Sypnier does not have a mental condition that would allow it to petition the state attorney general to seek civil confinement.

Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, D-Buffalo, believes that the Office of Mental Health should do a psychiatric evaluation of Sypnier.

“Based on the body of evidence from victims and anecdotal feedback from the Department of Correction, which referred him to OMH, there’s enough information to compel OMH to reconsider,” Hoyt said. “Sypnier is a monster, an absolute monster, and should be confined. The attorney general’s office has told me that it would welcome a referral.”

Sypnier’s victim who’s now 17 feels the same way.

“He should definitely be locked up in a mental facility. Have you heard what he is saying? Why would a 4-year-old and 7-year-old make that up? He is insane. Kids that age don’t even know what sex, molesting and sodomizing are, or they shouldn’t know,” the teenager said of her experiences with the elderly man. “I think he should be in a padded room by himself. He doesn’t even deserve a bed.”

When the Office of Mental Health was asked whether it would reconsider Sypnier’s case, a spokeswoman in Albany issued a brief statement that appeared to turn down the request by state lawmakers from the Buffalo area.

“The law is quite clear about the steps and information needed to civilly confine an individual, and the Office of Mental Health follows these steps meticulously in every case we review,” Leesa J. Rademacher stated. “Mr. Sypnier will be on postrelease supervision until May 16, 2012. The state Division of Parole will be responsible for his community supervision.”

In an extensive interview with The News, the 17-year-old girl said that Sypnier managed to gain her birth mother’s trust when they were living in the Town of Tonawanda and that it wasn’t long before the mother allowed him to baby-sit her daughters, who came to know him as “Grandpa Ted.”

The teenager says she still remembers when Sypnier moved into the neighborhood.

“We lived in the same apartment building. I was shy, and he put a piece of candy in my hand,” the teenager said. “I felt the wrapper in my hand, and I looked at it, and I looked at him. He just smiled and waved.”

During visits to his apartment, she says, he would have her and her sisters watch pornographic videos, including one about an adult Cinderella character.

He also showed the girls magazine photographs of naked women, she said.

On overnight visits when the sisters’ mother was out of town, she said, he frequently sexually assaulted them.

When town police arrested Sypnier in 1999, the sisters started receiving counseling and eventually were adopted after they were taken from their biological mother.

The 17-year-old girl said she and her sister, now 15, never discussed Sypnier until he surfaced recently in media accounts.

“I asked my sister the other day, ‘Do you remember anything about it?’ and she said, ‘No.’ It just makes her feel dirty hearing about it,” the 17-year-old said. “I never forgot. I pushed it to the back of my mind, but now when I hear about him, I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s like a nightmare coming back. I’m disgusted by it.”

She says that if she could face Sypnier, she would challenge all the claims he made in trying to dismiss the acts of sexual abuse.

“Come on, we were 4 and 7. Are you serious? He said we were promiscuous, and he blamed our parents for being neglectful,” the girl said. “Can you believe that, 4 and 7, being promiscuous?

“I want to tell him I still remember what he did. I have visuals stuck in my head. I’m 17 and still remember exactly what happened. I can tell you exactly what happened.”

Part of her reason for coming forward, she added, is to send a message to parents.

“I want all parents to pay special attention to their kids, pay attention to who they hang around with, where they are at all times,” she said. “Keep them away from anybody you don’t trust, and if you trust them, find out more about them.

“Pay attention to your kid’s behavior. Make it easy so that your kid can come to you and talk. Just reassure them they can come to you about anything, that it doesn’t matter.”

The older sister, now a high school senior who hopes to one day become a nurse, said she had one other reason for coming forward.

“I want to speak for myself and my little sister,” she said. “Me being the older sister, I want to do everything in my power to protect my little sister. It hurts me now with all this going on. There is no way I can hide it from her.”

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If what they say, "only the good die young" is true and therefore, the reverse of that is true....hell, this man might live to be 200 or more. Pure evil is he. How can the justice system ignore the victims and call it justice. Knowing he is out to do his evil deeds to others must be like torture and additional injury to all those victims in his past. I know it makes me sick and very angry.

Theodore A. Sypnier, 100-year-old convicted pedophile from New York state, has been sent to jail for violating parole that required him to get mental health treatment for sex offenders. Sypnier refused counseling aimed at getting him to acknowledge his crimes. He has previously served 15 months in prison for refusing counseling. He says he is too old to get treated.

Sypnier has been sexually molesting children for 60 years. He remains in denial of all his convictions. His family wants him under civil confinement for the rest of his life. The man will have a parole violation hearing within 30 days. Sypnier could go free in 2012 if he lives to be 102 years old.

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BJ.. so if I read this right, he is still free, and simply doing what ever 100 yr old pedophiles do while he awaits his hearing? I don't understand why, when there is a parole violation, it takes so long to get the paperwork done and have the person taken back into custody. Seeing this same thing in my own community. The person on probation is advised their parole is being revoked, but the process takes forever. In the mean time... they know they are one their way back to jail, so all bets are off on what they will do ... simply doesn't matter.

I can't imagine him having the energy to do anything to violate his parole.

I truly don't mean this statement to be funny, but come on..he's 100!!! Still, he did the crime, he should be back in custody.

Wrap, he was convicted in 2000 when he was 90 of molesting two young girls, ages 4 and 7. This "man" is pure evil and will continue to perpetrate these evil crimes as long as his body has a breath if given the opportunity. He is the billboard poster for proof that pedophiles don't change, can't be cured and will commit their atrocities at every opportunity.

by Marica Today at 4:56 am BJ.. so if I read this right, he is still free, and simply doing what ever 100 yr old pedophiles do while he awaits his hearing?

He served his time and was released. When he was sentenced no one thought he would live long enough to ever see the light of day again. He fooled them. Now he thinks he's too old to go to rehab for sex offenders and that's a violation of his parole so he's back in the clinker.

Theodore A. Sypnier, 100-year-old convicted pedophile from New York state, has been sent to jail for violating parole that required him to get mental health treatment for sex offenders.

laga wrote:Wrap, he was convicted in 2000 when he was 90 of molesting two young girls, ages 4 and 7. This "man" is pure evil and will continue to perpetrate these evil crimes as long as his body has a breath if given the opportunity. He is the billboard poster for proof that pedophiles don't change, can't be cured and will commit their atrocities at every opportunity.

I completely understand, Laga, and wholeheartedly AGREE he is pure evil and will continue his evil crimes. I am simply amazed that he is still alive and/or lucid enough to continue doing these despicable crimes to innocent children!!!

Wrap, I understand, the last judge to sentence him to only 10 years did so because he said he thought he would die in jail. I don't know, but I'm thinking maybe this evil needs a little push to the other side.

So this jerk IS back in custody??? I hope I am reading this right. The thought of this SICKO being anywhere near a child, I don't care HOW old he is, scares the daylight out of me.

Theodore A. Sypnier, the 100- year-old pedophile looking to be placed on unsupervised release in the community, does not require civil confinement, the state’s top mental health official told lawmakers last week.

Speaking publicly for the first time on Sypnier’s situation, Mental Health Commissioner Michael F. Hogan cited the high cost of incarcerating sex offenders through civil confinement once they complete their prison sentences.

Hogan said Sypnier, who is back in jail pending a parole-violation hearing regarding refusal to comply with sex-offender treatment, does not meet the criteria for civil confinement.

“And so you’re saying your staff did, in this particular case, evaluate this individual and determine he did not suffer from a mental abnormality and was not a clear and present threat to the community, and you declined to refer him to the attorney general for the civil-confinement prosecution?” Assemblyman James P. Hayes, R-Amherst, asked Hogan at an Albany budget hearing.

“That’s correct,” Hogan said. “If he comes up again, we’ll look at him and we’ll plod along.”

Hogan suggested that the high costs of locking up such individuals is considered in evaluating whether the person is likely to reoffend and should be a candidate for civil confinement.

“Our threshold is that if the risk of reoffense is in the range of one-third, then we go forward to the attorney general,” Hogan said.

“What that really means is that to put one of these individuals in a prison costs us about $200,000 a year, and as long as we keep the threshold at about one-third, we’re spending $600,000 a year to have three guys confined, one of whom would have reoffended and two of whom would not have. So we try to do this conservatively,” Hogan said.

That did not sit well with Hayes, who contends that incarceration costs are, on average, $32,000 annually.

A 58-year-old daughter of Sypnier, who says she was raped by him as a girl, described Hogan’s financial considerations as unforgivable.

“The fact that he is putting money ahead of children’s safety is typical of the mind-set and stonewalling my family has encountered for decades,” she said. “I wonder if parents realize their children’s safety is compared to the figure of $200,000. I’m enraged.”

The daughter said that it was particularly difficult to conceive of Hogan’s speaking this way in light of a registered letter she sent him about three weeks ago in which she provided personal details of the attacks she cited against her and other children by her father.

Hayes, in questioning Hogan’s reasoning, said he was outraged by the commissioner’s “one-third judgment call” in rating the level of danger posed by a sex offender.

Hogan, however, argued that his office has done an exceptional job in screening individuals for civil confinement since the law was adopted in 2007 and, because of that scrutiny, has avoided lawsuits challenging the law.

“So far, we’ve screened and not referred over 2,000 of these individuals, and the rearrest record is one-half of 1 percent of them having been charged with any reoffense that was greater than a misdemeanor,” the commissioner said. “When you’re dealing with future behavior, that’s a pretty good track record.”

Hayes said he was unimpressed.

“If ever there was a case for civil confinement, it’s Theodore Sypnier, who has a 60-year history of raping young children. The release of unrepentant and unreformed predators calls for scrutiny of the entire civil-confinement process,” he said.

At present, legislation has been proposed by members of the Western New York delegation to include other state agencies, in addition to the Office of Mental Health, in deciding whether an individual should be considered for court proceedings regarding civil confinement.

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Well isn't tat just a crock? I become more and more disgusted with our legal system and protective services everyday!

laga wrote:Old age obviously doesn't slow him down. He should not be within a mile of any children. If this doesn't prove pedophiles never change or get cured I don't know what does. I'll bet he has been harming children for most of his 100 years.

I agree, it finally caught up with him and he was caught. Cannot imagine a man at age 90 waking up one day and deciding he would rape young girls. He needs to be castrated. Doubt he needs Viagra, his sick fantasies about young children probably works like Viagra.

I am happy to report that, according to state officials, 100-year-old pedophile Ted Sypnier has reformed.

I do not know what turned this guy’s life around. Maybe it was a prison diet of thin soup and mushy gruel. Maybe he found God, hidden somewhere in the corner of his prison cell. Perhaps, after decades of stealing the innocence of children, he found a less perverse obsession, like crocheting.

If you believe any of that, you must work for the state’s Office of Mental Health.

OMH officials could have put Sypnier, Buffalo’s unrepentant child abuser, on the road to permanent confinement. Instead they decided that, despite a lifetime of damaging children, he is no longer a threat.

What, did he complete a 12-step Pedophiles Anonymous program? Slap on an anti-pedophile patch?

Mike Hogan, OMH commissioner, said last week that there is no reason to recommend Sypnier—currently in jail for a parole violation— for throwaway-the-key civil confinement as a likely-to-molest-again monster. At a state legislative hearing, Hogan cited Sypnier’s clean record while briefly independent and low repeat numbers from similar offenders.

“[Only] if we feel that the risk of re-offense is in the range of a third,” said Hogan, “do we go forward.”

I do not know what grade Hogan got in math class. But thinking that Sypnier has changed his ways at age 100 disregards six decades of perverse behavior and ignores the laws of probability. Believing that there is less than a 1-in-3 chance that Sypnier will damage another child is beyond wishful thinking. It is delusional.

Do not take my word for it. Ask Sypnier’s daughter. Martha Juchnowski says her father molested her as a child. She says she saw him molest other kids. She celebrated in 2000 when he was put away for eight years for sex crimes against two Town of Tonawanda sisters, ages 4 and 7, whose single mother let the “kindly” old man baby-sit them. The woman may never forgive herself.

“I am absolutely outraged by this,” Juchnowski said by phone from her North Carolina home. “The lives of children are at stake. My father has never stopped. If he’s not doing it, he’s making plans, sizing people up, looking at children and their living arrangements. If there is a single mother, it’s easier for him. That is his pattern.”

Juchnowski told OMH’s Hogan that she would go to Albany to make the case for putting her father away. The polite reply: Don’t call us. We’ll call you.

A legion of folks back up Juchnowski, from her siblings to Terry King, who runs the halfway house where Sypnier recently lived. Even at age 100, Sypnier shows no remorse and takes no responsibility. He blames the system for railroading him and accused mothers of victims of “blackmail.” He sent me a jailhouse letter last year, whining about how unfairly he was treated.

Jim Hayes, the ordinarily mild-mannered assemblyman from Amherst, got in Hogan’s face during last week’s hearing.

“It boggles the mind,” Hayes said, voice rising, “that the state’s laws cannot protect the people of our community.”

I do not know whether Hogan is a clueless bureaucrat or simply arrogant. Whatever the case, he just handed Ted Sypnier—the master manipulator—a free pass to strike again.

All we can do is hold our breath and hope that Sypnier keeps going to jail for violating parole. All we can do is pray that he does not get a chance to pull his “harmless old man” act on another naive mother.

The guy is beyond redemption. He has spent the last 60 years proving it. If Sypnier gets out from under the eye of the law, and puts his hands on another kid, we at least know whom to blame: Mike Hogan, OMH, (518) 474-4403.

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so that's 518-474-4403 Mike Hogan....Thanks BJ

I will call Mr. Hogan and tell him of my relief at this news, and I thought there was no hope..... :tongue in chee

The younger daughter of a 100- year-old Buffalo pedophile says she has been denied permission to testify against him at a parole-violation hearing this week to determine whether he should be set free.

Martha Juchnowski says that she wanted to testify against her father but that she was told her insights into Theodore A. Sypnier, who repeatedly raped her as a child, would have no bearing on the proceeding.

Juchnowski, 58, says it is important that the administrative law judge who will decide whether Sypnier returns to state prison have an understanding of how manipulative her father has been. The judge should also know that he lacks any respect for the law in a system that sometimes coddled him, she said.

“In the early 1960s, he became more brazen, targeting children in the neighborhood but being arrested for only one of the cases,” Juchnowski said. “He was convicted for sodomy and given a slap on the wrist and was told to stay away from children. The judge actually told him to ‘pick on people your own age,’ which is a good indicator of how the judicial system thought of this kind of crime.”

Sypnier is trying to regain his freedom after violating parole guidelines that require him to attend sex-offender classes and acknowledge his crimes against children.

He denies ever molesting any children, contending that the single mothers of the children he was convicted of molesting over the years were trying to extort money from him.

Juchnowski said the administrative law judge also should be aware of the psychological harm Sypnier caused to his young victims.

When he was in his 20s, she said, he was “thrown out” of his hometown of Rochester because of “indiscretions” with children.

And at the family’s home on Royal Avenue in Riverside, Juchnowski said, her father repeatedly attacked her and other children.

“As I got older, he became someone to fear and avoid being near at all costs. I remember him coming into my room at night, sitting on my bed staring at me and mentally flipping a coin. I pretended to be asleep and tried not to breathe, hoping that I could be swallowed up by my blankets and be invisible.

“I couldn’t scream or fight because there was no one to come to my aid, I was truly on my own. I’d be left in the dark wondering why I was so bad. The feelings of desolation and hopelessness were so overwhelming that I gave up any hope of rescue and resigned myself to this horrible way of life,” Juchnowski said Tuesday.

Her father’s behavior with other children in the neighborhood, she said, made life for Sypnier’s family difficult.

“Our neighbors were outraged, and I can remember having filthy names shouted to me as I walked to school, as if it were somehow my fault. At home, things were unbearable. My mother began to lose the ability to cope with the nightmare and took refuge in alcohol and prescription drugs and would be incoherent and bedridden often for weeks at a time.

“Twice, at the age of around 10, I came home to find her trying to commit suicide by turning on the gas in the kitchen stove. It was up to me to call the ambulance, open windows and try to revive her.”

Juchnowski, whose mother died in the late 1970s, says she is fearful that her father will come across as a harmless old man.

At the parole-violation hearing, it will be determined whether Sypnier should complete the remaining two years of his parole in prison. The parole is part of a sentence involving two Town of Tonawanda sisters he was accused of molesting back in the late 1990s. He has previously served a prison term of eight years, plus 15 months for a previous parole violation.

To really understand her father, Juchnowski says, those in the criminal-justice system need to know his history.

“I feel that a proper evaluation cannot be done unless his past is brought to light, showing patterns of intent, lack of remorse, patterns of deviant behavior that have only gotten worse over the years,” she said.

If she were allowed to testify, she says, she would warn the judge not to be deceived by her father.

“I would bring up his skill at fooling mental-health professionals,” she said. “He has been seen by psychiatrists and counselors over the years, and he has been able to manipulate each one into believing he’s just a harmless old man with a little personality quirk that’s really no big deal.”

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‘I’d rather die,’ a weeping Sypnier says
Judge urged to send pedophile, 100, back to prison for 2 years

Theodore A. Sypnier, the 100- year-old pedophile, wept Wednesday as a state parole official urged a judge to send him back to prison for two more years.

After the hearing, Sypnier, who for decades molested children, told The Buffalo News: “I don’t want to go back. I’d rather die.”

That could very well happen, his attorney told Administrative Law Judge Judith M. Cummins, who revoked Sypnier’s parole during a hearing at the Erie County Correctional Facility in Alden. The state’s Board of Parole will make the final decision in the case.

“In two months, Mr. Sypnier will be 101 years old. I fail to see how this man is a threat to society. A two-year parole hold could easily be considered a death sentence, since statistically, how many people make it to 103?” attorney Karen L. Hensley said.

Hensley urged that Sypnier be returned to supervised parole in the community or, at most, sentenced to 12 months in prison.

Cynthia J. Mooney, a parole-revocation specialist, argued that Sypnier should be punished with two more years behind bars because his most recent parole violation is the exact same one that sent him to prison for 18 months in 2008 — failure to attend sex-offender classes.

“We request he be held for two years. After that, we’d want him on parole so we could have a say in monitoring him,” Mooney said. “His serious criminal record goes directly toward sexual deviancy and a threat to the community, and he engages in the same defiant behavior and failure to get any insights into his horrific sexual deviant past.”

Sypnier, undaunted, sought mercy.

Hoping to be granted leniency, he pleaded guilty to the latest parole violation, but the judge advised him and Hensley not to get their hopes up.

“I do acknowledge your request for leniency, but I have to say don’t be overly optimistic on your request,” Cummins said.

In explaining why leniency might not be an option, the judge cited an assessment from the Mid- Erie Counseling and Treatment Services’ sex-offender program, where Sypnier missed three appointments.

“Angry, defensive and speaking over the treatment provider,” Cummins said in reading from the report.

In another section, the report stated that Sypnier, despite his repeated public denials of sexually abusing children, admitted to the behavior.

“He angrily told the writer [of the report] some of his deviant behavior he did to his victims, but he blamed his victims for fabrications and that he was drunk,” the report stated.

At one point during the parole- violation hearing — as it seemed increasingly unlikely that there would be no leniency in the judge’s recommendation — Sypnier took off his eyeglasses and dabbed away tears with tissue provided by his lawyer, who patted his back.

Hensley said Sypnier missed his sex-offender classes because of his memory.

“I can’t speak for anyone but myself, and I am half Mr. Sypnier’s age, but I forget appointments,” she said, adding that other than missing the appointments, her client complied with all other parole conditions, which included curfew and wearing a global-positioning bracelet.

“He wasn’t just floating around,” she said.

Cummins explained that she would reserve her decision on making a recommendation until early April in order to give Hensley time to submit medical documents and possible character references for Sypnier.

Mooney said she also needed extra time so that she could obtain statements from some of Sypnier’s victims for the Board of Parole to review.

Before being taken back to his jail cell, Sypnier was asked by The News why he refused to attend classes at the sex-offender program.

He said that he attended similar classes at a state prison.

“I had the schooling in Groveland [Correctional Facility] for one year,” he said. “It’s the same program.”

Sypnier also lamented being abandoned by his family, saying, “I have no support from my family.”

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Poor, poor, pitful me.
F*%#*R!

"Only the good die young" and this guy is evil personified, so evil he may never die of natural causes.

Sypnier also lamented being abandoned by his family, saying, “I have no support from my family.”

Why would his family "support" him?"

Charm, my sentiments exactly!!!!!

BUFFALO, N.Y., April 16 (UPI) -- A 100-year-old Buffalo, N.Y., man convicted of molesting children was sentenced to two more years in prison for violating parole, state officials said.

Theodore A. Sypnier would be almost 103 after serving two more years in prison for refusing to attend sex offender classes after he was released from prison in 2008, the Buffalo (N.Y.) News reported.

Sypnier was convicted of molesting two young sisters in 1999 and sentenced to nine years in prison and released to a Buffalo halfway house in 2007. However, he was re-incarcerated for violating parole for refusing to attend sex offender classes.

Prosecutors have described Sypnier as an "evil" unrepentant child molester, who had been accused of sexually molesting children for most of his adult life.

Martha Juchnowski, 58, Sypnier's daughter alleged her father molested her and other neighborhood girls.

"I am very happy that the authorities are becoming more enlightened about how sex offenders are incorrigible and will never change, regardless of their age," Juchnowski told Buffalo News.

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yay!! i'm happy he's back in prison! :)

Me too, but this is so sick.. that would mean he was in his 90's when he molested those poor girls