Friday - June 23, 2006

Predator Punked In Alabama

Finally, it’s over ... and the judge did the right thing this time. This case has a very special meaning to me. I have followed it for the past few years, waiting for this day. Why? Well, those of you who read here regularly may know by now that I’m a transplanted Alabama native, currently stranded in St. Louis. I like the Midwest but it just ain’t home.

Besides the fact that this heinous crime happened “back home”, I have a special attachment to the case. You see ... I worked for this man in 1996. At the time I was doing software engineering work for a Department Of Defense contractor at the USAF’s Standard Systems Center in Montgomery. I was coding in Ada, building databases in Oracle and Team Lead for projects to manage the USAF’s information systems.

Lt. Colonel Wright retired from the Air Force and was hired as Office Manager for our contracting company’s local office. Nothing unusual. Military officers almost always retire and go to work for DoD contractors. We were all introduced to him at a meeting of Team Leads and Project Managers. I shook his hand and said something pleasant which I don’t recall now. I’m a fairly good judge of character and I almost instantly had a feeling of revulsion about the man. I don’t know whether it was the eyes, the false smile, the sweaty palm or what. Something just set off alarms in my head.

I have never been one to let first impressions totally cloud my relations with people though so I shrugged it off and went on back to work. That’s when things started to get weird. In the ensuing months, everyone in the office developed an extreme distaste for the man after a few minor incidents. He was good at passing the buck and letting others take the blame. He promised things he never delivered on. Our relations with the Air Force began to get a little strained.

Then, about six months after he came to our office he was gone. Fired. Can you guess why? Yep, you guessed it. We got hit with a lawsuit by the office secretary charging him with sexual harassment. It was settled out of court after the company saw the mountain of evidence and listened to depositions of witnesses. During this period, I was working outside the office on base, in direct contact with the Air Force. I didn’t hear about it until it was all over. It all went down in just a few days. He was gone.

The next we heard of him was a few years later when we heard he was working as a substitute teacher in Prattville, just outside of Montgomery. He got in trouble for “strange behavior” when several students complained about him. We heard he was taken off the list of substitute teachers and would not be teaching. What happened next was a foul-up at the school and the final, damnable acts of a miserable sexual predator. The school came up short a teacher one day and someone looked at the list of available substitutes. The list was an old one that hadn’t been recently updated. You can probably guess what happened then.

Yes, this creature was called to teach that day. You can read below what happened. I get nauseated just thinking about it. As I said above, the judge did the right thing. Twenty years, hard time. I don’t think Mr. Wright will last very long at Holman Prison down in Atmore, Alabama. It’s too bad the State of Alabama retired “Yellow Mama”, the state’s trusty old electric chair at Holman, two years ago. He would have been a prime candidate in my book. Twenty years in Holman is almost as good.

The main point you should take away from my little story here is that sexual predators are not spontaneous victims of temporary lust. It is almost always a lifetime habit that never goes away and only gets worse over the years. This man is a prime example of that. Sexual predators can never be “rehabilitated”. Their nature is warped and the longer they get away with their crime the bolder they get. Our courts and judges need to realize that and take action accordingly. I urge all states to pass Megan’s Law. Put these people away for life. No probation. No house arrest. Dammit, NO! Send them to prison and keep them there. Forever, if need be. In the meantime, I have a message for Mr. Wright .... “Welcome to your new home, pervert!”

Sex Offender Gets 20 Years
_{June 23, 2006}

PRATTVILLE, Alabama (MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER)—A former substitute teacher in the Autauga County public school system was sentenced to 20 years in prison Thursday, the maximum allowed by law, on a laundry list of sex charges. Terry Cleveland Wright, 61, of 1268 Plum St. was sentenced by Circuit Judge Ben Fuller. He pleaded guilty several weeks ago to seven counts of sexual abuse, two counts of enticing a child by computer for immoral purposes, one count of possession of child pornography and three misdemeanor counts of harassment.

The sexual abuse and harassment took place Oct. 7, 2004, at Prattville Elementary School, courthouse records state. Wright’s victims were 9- and 10-year-old boys and girls he touched inappropriately. A sobbing Wright apologized to the victims, his family and the community before the sentence was handed down. “I can’t say how sorry I am,” said Wright, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. “If there was anything I could do to make the pain easier, I would do it. I would give my life if it would take the pain away.”

Fuller listened to emotional comments from parents of several victims asking for a long prison sentence. “Every morning I put my child on the bus to go to school and I trusted the teachers to look out for my child,” said one mother. “Don’t have any leniency on this man, he needs to pay. I looked up ‘predator’ in the dictionary and the definition was ‘an animal that preys upon others.’ This man is a predator and he needs to be locked up so he can’t prey on anyone else.”

Wright’s defense attorney suggested a sentence of house arrest, wearing an ankle bracelet for tracking purposes. “Mr. Wright, I may very well have taken your life, if it was in my power to do it,” Fuller said before sentencing. “The most touching statement I read was from one of your victims who said she doesn’t want to be in contact with older men, even her grandfather. My staff told me today that this has to be a very difficult case to decide. This case is not difficult for me because of your conduct.”

During the investigation into the school abuse, it was discovered Wright contacted two teenage girls from north Alabama by computer. Those incidents occurred before the school abuse, said Chief Assistant District Attorney Glenn Goggans. Both girls were 15. “He tried to get one girl to meet him, and he did meet another at a hotel in Pinson,” Goggans said. “This man is a sexual predator. If he remained in society, it wouldn’t be a question of if he would do it again, it would be a question of when.”

Wright’s full sentence was 20 years each on the enticing charges, 10 years each on the sex abuse charges, 10 years on the possession of child porn and three months on each harassment charge. The sentences are to be served concurrently, hence the 20-year stretch. The district attorney’s office suggested such a sentence in the plea agreement, an agreement that was approved by the victims and their parents.

Wright had been on the substitute list for just a few months. He passed a criminal background check before being hired. A teacher at the elementary school became ill in the middle of the day, and Wright was the only person on the substitute list that could come in. The week before he had been removed from the campus of Prattville Intermediate, after several students complained about his behavior. That was his first time to serve as a substitute. His name was taken off the substitute list, but the elementary school was using an older list.

The school system changed their policy after the incident, so updated lists would always be used. Several parents have filed two civil suits against the school system. Those cases are pending in federal court in Montgomery.

Posted by The Skipper     on 06/23/2006 at 12:40 PM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Personal •  
• Comments (6) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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