Prosecutors push to stop bail for rapist Chapman
Refuse to withdraw dangerousness claim
Prosecutors bent on stopping serial child rapist Wayne W. Chapman from being set free will try to persuade a clerk-magistrate tomorrow to deny bail to the 70-year-old.
Middlesex Superior Court First Assistant Clerk-Magistrate Lisa McGovern continued yesterday’s arraignment on new charges to tomorrow morning after she told assistant Middlesex District Attorney Emily Jackson she was not inclined to grant her request for a dangerousness hearing. Jackson refused to withdraw it.
A wheelchair-bound Chapman has been imprisoned more than 40 years for raping two Lawrence boys in 1977 and for his subsequent 2004 civil commitment as a sexually dangerous person. He is suspected of molesting as many as 100 children in three states.
Chapman, however, has been granted release by the state Supreme Judicial Court and has been waiting on a lower court judge to officially discharge him pending his securing acceptable housing.
Before that could happen, a Middlesex grand jury indicted him on charges of open and gross lewdness and lewd, wanton and lascivious behavior stemming from alleged sexual offenses he committed last month at MCI-Shirley state prison.
Chapman is accused of exposing his genitals to a prison nurses’ station on June 3 and of masturbating in front of medical staff on June 4. He pleaded not guilty yesterday.
Jackson appealed to McGovern saying “Chapman is a dangerous person based on his criminal history” and his “pretrial release would pose a danger to the public at large.”
McGovern said she needed convincing that the new charges rise to the level of a dangerousness hearing. She ordered him held in the meantime until tomorrow’s hearing plays out with either a dangerousness hearing or a bail argument.
“I think what the commonwealth is trying to do here is inflate the charges,” Chapman’s attorney Melissa Devore told McGovern. “You don’t have before you any sort of attempted rape, attempted indecent assault and battery . ... There’s no attempted touching. No one is going to die if you masturbate in front of them. A person may feel offended. They may be appalled. But their personal safety, under these crimes, is not impacted.”