Thread: "Anchor baby" Gone Bad

His trial is finally coming up. There are links to the whole story at www.GrandForksHerald.com

Rodriguez: History of a sexual predator
By Mara H. Gottfried
St. Paul Pioneer Press
More than two decades ago, Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. already was being called a "dangerous person to society."

Arrested in 1974 for kidnapping and sexually assaulting two Crookston women at knifepoint, he was sent to the state security hospital in St. Peter, Minn.

Days after he left there, in 1980, he stabbed another woman and tried to kidnap her in Crookston.

After spending 23 years in prison, Rodriguez was released May 1. Monday, Dec 1,2003 he was arrested and charged with kidnapping UND student Dru Sjodin, 22, who remains missing.

Court documents tell the story of a man who says he was sexually abused as a child and who has spent nearly all his adult life in trouble for crimes against women.

Born Feb. 18, 1953, in Texas, Rodriguez is the second oldest of five children of migrant workers who moved for 15 years between Texas and the Red River Valley. His family settled in Crookston in 1963.

He later described his home life as unpleasant and said his parents were critical of him and unreasonable in their demands. Rodriguez said he used alcohol and drugs growing up, including acid, hash and marijuana.

Not proficient in English, Rodriguez dropped out of school in ninth or 10th grade to work at American Crystal Sugar Co.'s factory in Crookston.

In 1973, he sought help for anxiety and depression. He said then that he had made several obscene phone calls to women, according to a psychological report from the Minnesota Security Hospital in St. Peter.

By the end of 1974, Rodriguez was in court pleading guilty to rape and attempted rape.

He had approached a woman in October 1974 in Crookston, asking for a ride home. She agreed. He directed her to a driveway, grabbed her by the throat, pulled her back in the car when she tried to get out and tried to rape her.

A month later, Rodriguez offered to help a woman start her vehicle when she came out of a Crookston theater. Rodriguez forced his way into the truck, drove her into the country, threatened her with a knife and raped her.

He was sent to the sex offender treatment program at St. Peter in 1975. A 1976 psychological report says Rodriguez appeared to be suffering from "an alcoholic personality disorder with some paranoid, schizoid and antisocial tendencies."

Rodriguez reported at the time that he was sexually aggressive but that it wasn't a problem to control the feelings.

April 9, 1980, he was released on a pass to his parents' Crookston home. April 13, he stepped out of a car and asked a woman for directions on a Crookston street. She said he grabbed her arm and told her: "Get in the car or I'm going to kill you."

When she struggled, Rodriguez stabbed her. The knife blade went completely through her left arm. He also stabbed her in the abdomen.

He was convicted of attempted kidnapping and aggravated assault. At his sentencing in June 1980, Rodriguez and his attorney asked he be sent back to St. Peter instead of prison. "Well, I guess I always will need treatment of some kind, and I would benefit from it," Rodriguez said in response to why it would be a benefit to return to the hospital.

The presiding judge told Rodriguez he appeared to have a severe problem.

"I don't know whether it is emotional or whatever it is but it is something that you apparently have no control over," he said. "Until such time as there is some medical proof, Mr. Rodriguez, that something has taken place with you that will prevent you from acting out in this way, you should not be allowed to roam free in our society."

The only treatment Rodriguez received during the next 23 years in prison was in 1981, for chemical dependency. He refused sex offender treatment.

In February 2001, Rodriguez was evaluated in expectation of his May 2003 release. The psychologist recommended< cm+RDcory:to the three-member screening board that -RD>Rodriguez not be civilly committed, which would have placed him in a state hospital indefinitely, and the board concurred.

"To put that in perspective ... he was not recommended for civil commitment based on the fact that he had been in prison for 23 years, unlike most sex offenders he had not acted at all sexually (in prison) and he was then 50 years of age and most of the data shows that recidivism is less likely the older the offender gets," Minnesota Department of Corrections Commissioner Joan Fabian said Tuesday. "So, with those standards at that time, it was not referred."

Lots of excuses for a sexual predator. Nice.

Dixie

Yes, lots of excuses. And that's not to say it's only a certain race with excuses. Political correctness has given plenty of us excuses for our problems.

But this guy is now 53 years old. How many more anchor babies are already here and grown who may have the same propensity to this type of sexual crime?

Me? I prefer to be politically incorrect and responsible for my own problems.

Sounds like the typical model citizen that Sen. Teddy Kennedy wants to give amnesty to...