RESIDENTS OPPOSE PLAN TO HOUSE CRIMINALS
At least one sexual predator could move into E. County home
About 200 people who live on or near Mount Helix gathered Tuesday night to voice their opposition to the placement of at least one sexually violent predator in a nearby home.
Authorities announced last week the proposed placement of 78-year-old Douglas Badger at the home on Horizon Hills Drive off Avocado Boulevard.
Neighbors also fear authorities will soon propose housing a second sexually violent predator at the location based on what looks to be a draft news release discovered on the San Diego County District Attorney’s website. It lists the home at 10957 Horizon Hills Drive as the proposed placement location for 63-year-old Merle Wade Wakefield.
The news release is not found on the section of the district attorney’s website where other information about local sexually violent predators is posted.
A spokeswoman for the District Attorney’s Office directed questions about the news release to the San Diego Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement Task Force, of which the District Attorney’s Office is a participating agency, along with the Sheriff’s Department and others. Messages left with the task force were not immediately returned Wednesday.
To be classified by the state as a sexually violent predator, or SVP, a person has to have been convicted of a violent sex crime against at least one victim, and be diagnosed with a condition that makes that person likely to re-offend. The SVP designation, reserved for less than 1 percent of the state’s sexual offender population, means they can be confined in state hospitals long after serving their prison terms.
While at the state hospital, SVPs can take part in a treatment program aimed at curbing their criminal urges. Eventually, they can ask the court to release them to live in the community, under supervision by state authorities, where they are required to continue treatment on an outpatient basis. The process is a civil matter — not criminal.
Sarah Thompson, a mother who lives in the neighborhood of the proposed placement location and who organized Tuesday evening’s meeting, repeat
edly pointed out the “likely to re-offend” part of the SVP designation as one of the most troubling aspects of Badger potentially living in the neighborhood.
Another mother who helped organize Tuesday’s neighborhood meeting, Amy Fago, said she and her young family specifically moved two years ago from another Mount Helix home to their current home, which is just a few hundred feet away from Badger’s proposed placement location, because it was on a cul-de-sac that offered a safe place for her children to play.
“That’s going to be taken from us,” Fago said.
Badger, who has a history of assaulting young male hitchhikers at gunpoint, was released from prison in 1997 and has spent most of the past two dozen years in maximum-security state hospitals participating in a sex offender treatment program. He has convictions from 1981
in Riverside County and 1991 in San Diego County, and was sent to prison twice, according to the District Attorney’s Office. He has also been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and sexual sadism.
Judge Theodore Weathers ruled earlier this year that Badger, after undergoing decades of treatment, was eligible for conditional release. The judge will hold a hearing later this month to determine if the Mount Helix home is an appropriate placement location.
The virtual hearing is set for 9 a.m. April 20 in San Diego Superior Court and can be viewed via Zoom. Information on how to access the hearing can be found at sdcda.org/preventing/sex-offenders/sex-offenders.
State hospital officials have typically chosen isolated homes in rural communities like Jacumba Hot Springs to house SVPs. The Horizon Hills Drive home, in contrast, sits in a comparatively dense neighborhood in an unincorporated area just outside of El Cajon city
limits. According to Zillow, the 3,500-square-foot home has four bedrooms and two bathrooms. It’s flanked on two sides by homes that Zillow estimates each cost more than $1 million. A sixbedroom, 8,000-square-foot
home in the nearby cul-desac is estimated to be worth nearly $3 million.
The owner of the home at 10957 Horizon Hills Drive has not returned multiple messages seeking comment. Neighbors said they’ve also been unable to reach the man. Several different renters have lived at the home in recent years, according to neighbors.
A spokesman for the California Department of State Hospitals wrote in an email that state and federal law prohibited him from addressing specific questions about Badger, but did write that “DSH does not currently have a signed lease agreement for the (Horizon Hills Drive) property.”
It was unclear how state officials identified the Horizon Hills Drive home as a potential placement property.
The spokesman, Ken August, said GPS data is used to identify areas that meet legal distancing requirements from schools and parks.