Public needs protection from Chapman, others
Wayne Chapman is free. On Friday, Chapman, 71, got out of his wheelchair and climbed into the front seat of a Toyota Prius outside Middlesex Superior Court. Off he went.
“He’s completely free,” his lawyer, Eric Tennen, told the Herald.
Completely free to do whoknows-what. We do know what Chapman frequently did with his free time before he was incarcerated and long before two state-appointed examiners under contract for the Department of Correction ruled he was too frail to reoffend, last year.
Before all of that, Wayne Chapman spent his free time luring young boys into wooded areas under the ruse that he was looking for his lost dog. Once there, he assaulted them. In fact, he has admitted to molesting up to 100 boys across multiple states.
He also remains a suspect in the 1976 disappearance of a 10year-old Lawrence boy.
As the Herald’s Joe Dwinell reported, Chapman’s history is horrific and the records prove it.
He tortured cats as a youth, “locking them in boxes and leaving them to starve” in the woods. He also killed a cat with bricks.
He made advances on an 11year-old stepson.
He promised a paper route to a 12-year-old boy in Pennsylvania as a ruse to lure him into the woods and molest him.
He once fantasized about “fondling and killing a kid.”
In the 1970s, at the height of his attacks on “50-100” boys, he said: “I need help because I cannot help myself from doing these things.”
But last year, two state-appointed examiners cleared him for release. They said he was too old and infirm to commit any more sexual assaults. Shortly after their determination, Chapman was accused of allegedly exposing himself in front of nurses on June 3, 2018, at MCI-Shirley state prison and reportedly masturbating the following day.
He was acquitted by a jury of those charges Friday after an initial impasse and off he went.
Wayne Chapman is a monster and he should not be walking free in society. Our justice system failed his victims and the community at large.
It is not acceptable that the only thing between predators and the public are state-approved examiners. They work for a private company, essentially a vendor.
“These examiners are literally single-handedly responsible for why he’s walking free,” attorney Wendy Murphy told Boston Herald Radio.
Legislation is needed immediately to fix this problem. Right now, Gov. Charlie Baker’s bill to address this is languishing in the Joint Committee on the Judiciary. The legislation would require a court trial if someone who had been previously deemed a sexually dangerous person is found by psychological experts to be safe for release.
Lawmakers on Beacon Hill should pass this legislation. Attorney General Maura Healey, a Democrat, supports the bill, as does the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association and the Massachusetts Major City Chiefs of Police.
This is a no-brainer. Pass the bill.
Each day someone like Chapman is allowed to roam the streets is another day we have failed the children of the commonwealth and anywhere such predators operate.