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Rapist heading to St. Paul is latest sex offender to leave MSOP - StarTribune.com Rapist heading to St. Paul, joins ranks of sex offenders being released He's among six offenders freed in the past year, unprecedented for a program that has confined offenders indefinitely. By Chris Serres(http://www.stadribune.com/chris-mmes/10645926/) Star Tribune FEBRUARY a. 2016—10:54VM A twice -convicted rapist with a history of assaults against women is about to be released from the state's secure sex offender treatment program to a halfway house in St. Paul. Oliver Lenell Dority, 50, who sexually assaulted a woman in 1994 after hiding in the back seat of her car at a gas station, is the latest in a growing number of violent offenders who have been approved by state judges for conditional release since the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) cane under intense federal court pressure for failing to adequately move people toward release. In just over a year, six offenders have been conditionally discharged from MSOP —an unprecedented pace for a program with a history of confining rapists and other violent offenders indefinitely, sometimes for decades, with little opportunity for release. The releases reflect a loosening of Minnesota s notoriously rigid and labyrinthine process for determining which MSOP clients are appropriate for release, with state officials and judges showing more willingness to discharge people with violent histories and some risk factors for reoMending. The releases are also arousing far less political controversy than in years past — retlecting a possible easing of attitudes toward offenders, say experts. All of the offenders approved for discharge over the past year are repeat rapists. They includc Rouen Jenu, who sexually assaulted twu women while Ire was a teenager; Benjamin Gissenda rner, who twice raped a St. Paul college student after breaking into her apartment, and Christopher R. Coker, who raped three teenage girls in separate incidents in the early 1990s. The commissioner of Human Services plans to appeal Coker's discharge, saying experts do not believe he is ready for release into the community. Little public outcry But the others have been discharged with little or no public acrimony "Where is the drama? Where is the political hue and cry?" asked a sarcastic Warren Maas, president of the Minnesota chapter of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers. "The vicious rhetoric that we've seen in the past against sex offenders has really subsided." To some legal experts, the recent releases are merely evidence that professionals at MSOP are taking seriously their duty to provide treatment and move people through the Program. Last June, U.S. District judge Donovan Frank declared the program unconstitutional after concluding that MSOP was detaining untold numbers of offenders who no longer met the state's criteria for confinement. Though Frank's ruling is under appeal, the state has been under increased legal pressure to demonstrate that it provides offenders actual treatment and a clear path toward release. Currently, the MSOP holds about 720 rapists, child molesters and other offenders, who have already completed their prison teens, at secure treatment centers in Moose Lake and St. Peter. 'Notable improvement Like many at MSOP, Dority has a long list of criminal offenses. in 1995, he was convicted of raping two women within three weeks of each other. Page 1 of 2 (http://s"edia staariWne wm/imageslows_1455075227! Dority http://www.startribune.comlrapist-heading-to-st-paul-joins-ranks-of-sex-offenders-being-r... 2/10/2016