Responses To Sex-Offender Treatment Facility Run the Gamut

Citizens and business owners near the Corrigan-Radgowski Prison, where the state's first sex-offender treatment program could be located, have a variety of responses to the court decision Tuesday that would open the door for the facility to come to Montville.

"On one hand," said Thomas Ma, who lives on Haughton Park 2, yards from the prison grounds, "it's a good thing, but it's kind of close to where I live."

Ma is a dealer at Mohegan Sun. He believes that sex offenders "were born that way."

"They're victims themselves," he said.

"Those people don't have the advantages that you and I had," he said.

The vote to fund the construction of the public safety building, and its location across the street from the prison grounds, where the sex-offender facility would be, has eased the minds of Lori Winslow and Cheryl Perry, who work at the Montville Animal Hospital office beside Montville Hardware.

"We're going to put the police station next door," Winslow said. "So if it has to be anywhere…"

"Knowing that the police station is there would somehow sway my decision," Perry said.

Shannon Pearson had a different attitude entirely.

"I don't care if they're in a facility," he said. "But I don't want them walking the streets."

Carl DelVecchio, owner of the Outpost, which sells guns and ammunition, said he thinks that bringing suit against Connecticut was a waste of money.

"I think that the state is going to do what they want to do," he said.

He does not expect gun sales to go up, if the facility were to be built.

"I don't think people are afraid of it in that way, such as home invasion," he said. "I think the offenders are violent in their own way, but are cowards to people in general."

Sandy Hinze owns Sun-sation Tanning, and the indoor golf facility next door. Both are in the Gristmill Plaza, close to the prison grounds.

"I'm not happy about it," she said this morning about the possibility of the treatment facility coming to town. "My clientele is many young women. Nice-looking young women. I feel like it's really not a good thing.

"Where in Montville do I have any choice, except to depend on out local people to try to protect us from this?

"I don't think there that anything we can do is going to change this. I just hope and pray that the right thing happens," she said.

Dean Tine, who owns Montville True Value Hardware with his brother Shaun, voiced a response shared by many Montvillians: "Nobody wants it in their town." 

The Montville Animal Hospital was incorrectly identified in an earlier version of this story.