From the South Bend Tribune – South Bend, Ind.
Author: ALICIA GALLEGOS
Date: Nov 22, 2009
Start Page: A1
MISHAWAKA — The February afternoon was bright and sunny for the first time that winter as the then-19-year-old woman stopped at Taco Bell for lunch.
Sara had traded breaks with another hair salon employee that day, she later recalled at an interview at her South Bend home.
It is The Tribune’s general policy not to name victims of crime; her name has been changed.
Sara sat in her car behind the hair salon where she works, eating the rest of her meal. Suddenly, she remembers the driver’s-side door of her Toyota Corolla swinging open and a man standing above her.
“He said, ‘Scoot over!'” she recalled. “I started screaming and holding down the horn.”
The stranger, who Sara would later learn was a convicted sex offender recently released from prison, was Michael F. Lindsey, then 47.
Sara remembers trying to quickly crawl out of the passenger-side door.
“He grabbed me by the hood,” she said. “He got me back (inside).”
Lindsey, who had a knife, told Sara to sit on the floor of the passenger side and not to move. He then put the car into gear and started driving.
Sara started questioning the man. Lindsey, she said, told her he had “done something bad” and had to get away.
“I said, ‘Just promise me you won’t hurt me.'”
The woman remained calm as the two drove on. Lindsey was relatively friendly, she said, making small talk. He agreed with Sara when she told him she would have to eventually call police. He told her the story would make a good one to tell her grandchildren someday, she remembered.
“I knew, obviously, I wasn’t in a good situation,” Sara said. “But I honestly thought he would drop me off in like a half-hour.”
The young woman had no idea the drive would instead turn into a five-hour nightmare and land her in a desolate farm field in the middle of nowhere.
Haunting phone call
The phone rang close to 5:30 p.m.
It was the salon manager, Sara’s mom later remembered. She told Sara’s mom not to panic but that Sara had never returned from her lunch break.
“We knew immediately something was wrong,” Sara’s mom recalled.
Sara’s parents called police, who suggested they try area hospitals before filing a missing person’s report. Sara’s father did that, but no one had been admitted under his daughter’s name.
The parents were frantic. They later met Mishawaka police at the hair salon and filed a report.
Ironically, Sara’s mom said the family had just seen the movie “Taken,” in which the main character’s daughter is kidnapped. Remembering a scene in which one character uses cell phone GPS tracking, the parents headed to the AT&T store to inquire about finding their daughter that way.
A police officer later met them to give permission for the store to use the method. The data sent waves of dread through them.
“They said, ‘Does she know anyone in Lafayette?'” Sara’s mom recalled. “‘Because she’s headed in that direction.'”
‘Just complete fear’
Darkness was setting in as Lindsey pulled Sara’s car into the lot of an abandoned farm. The young woman had been sitting on the floor of the passenger side for at least an hour and had no idea where she was. Lindsey looked unsure of what to do, Sara remembered, then told her to get out of the car.
“I’m telling him he can either let me go and drive away or stay there and let me drive away,” she recalled. “He was really indecisive, going back and forth.”
But then Lindsey grabbed her arm and led her into the empty barn. He seemed to suddenly snap, Sara said, from the sociable driver to another, darker person.
The man cornered the petite teenager in the barn. He demanded she undress.
“I just stared at him in the eyes, and said, ‘No, you’re not doing this,'” Sara remembered.
Anger flashed across Lindsey’s face, Sara recalled. He grabbed the woman by the coat and threw her to the ground.
“He takes my tights down,” Sara remembered. “He’s straddling me, he takes off my boots. I’m telling him he promised he wouldn’t touch me. I told him, ‘You’re a sick man!'” Lindsey, she said, acknowledged that he was sick.
When Sara told him he was going to be caught, she said he replied, “I’m already caught.”
The man was bent above her when Sara said his mood abruptly changed again. He suddenly stopped and released her. Lindsey told her to get dressed, and he led her back to the car.
They drove on in silence.
“After that, it was just complete fear,” Sara said.
As other vehicles passed, Sara tried to signal them with her eyes, she said. Hours passed. Towns came and went.
Finally, Sara spoke up, telling him he promised to have her home by dark. The man eventually pulled into another abandoned farm.
At last, Lindsey agreed to let her go, but only after she agreed to wait in the field for an hour after he left.
“As he was leaving, he gave me a blanket (from the car),” Sara said. “I told him, ‘Thank you for not touching me.’ And he drove away.”
Pitch blackness surrounded the young woman as she started out to find help in the frosty night. She followed the sound of a barking dog and about 40 minutes later came upon a house.
An elderly woman opened the door when she knocked, Sara remembered, and let the girl inside. “The second I walked into the house, I started bawling,” Sara said.
Reuniting
A short time after their daughter’s cell phone had been found, Sara’s dad says a police officer pulled him aside at the AT&T store.
Officers had just heard from White County police that Sara had been found: She had been abducted, but she was safe.
Officers offered to send a car to bring her home. “I said, ‘No, we’re going to get her,'” Sara’s mom recalled. “I needed to see my daughter.”
As the couple started what seemed to be an endlessly long drive, Sara called her mom’s cell phone from the White County station.
“I think we both just started crying,” the mother remembered. “I think we could both barely speak. We were just so relieved to hear each other’s voices.”
Sara was later able to identify Lindsey in a photo lineup.
“The more I found out about him, the more I freaked out,” Sara said. “I saw what he was capable of doing. I realized how lucky I was.”
‘It can happen to anyone’
Today, Sara and her family are doing their best to move on from the chilling abduction ordeal.
Lindsey was eventually captured and recently sentenced to 40 years in prison in the abduction.
At first, Sara, now 20, refused to go anywhere alone, her mom says. Only recently has she started driving again (now in a new car) or going anywhere solo, she said. Family members say the nightmare of Sara’s abduction crosses their minds every day.
But Sara’s parents also know how blessed they are.
“There are people who don’t get their children back,” Sara’s dad says, with tears in his eyes. “I couldn’t imagine going the rest of your life not having her back.”
Sara adds that although she tries to remain upbeat and positive, her perspective on life has changed. She is constantly checking her surroundings, making sure doors are locked, and wondering about possible dangers.
But the young woman also is determined not to let the experience keep her from moving forward. She has since returned to work and often spends time with friends.
“I don’t think it should be a thing that holds any one of us back,” she said. “But it’s something to tell people, to open their eyes.
“In the end, it can happen to anyone.”
(This story ran with another article about the past life and future arrest of sex offender, Michael Lindsey. His story is detailed below.)
Can Sex Offenders Be Cured?
Lindsey| Can sex offenders be cured? By Alicia Gallegos Tribune Staff WriterSource: news Sunday,November 22, 2009 Edition: mich, , Page A1 |
SOUTH BEND – Despite a disturbing criminal past, friends and family believed Michael Lindsey had made significant strides in the decades he spent behind bars.
For more than 20 years, the man was a model prisoner, espousing deep religious beliefs, completing law courses and assisting other inmates with criminal cases.
Upon his initial release, officials say the man complied with all parole regulations, fulfilled treatment requirements and was holding down a full-time job and adjusting well to married life.
“I thought if anybody in the world can make it on release, it would be Mike,” said prison minister Tim Blakley, who has known Lindsey for almost 10 years.
But just months after being allowed back into society, Lindsey did more than just violate his parole. He led authorities on a frenzied chase across county lines after three attempted abductions and one kidnapping.
Perspectives differ on what led to Lindsey’s breakdown and subsequent crime spree.
Some believe he was never truly rehabilitated from his past sexual deviance and was a ticking time bomb.
But others, including Lindsey himself, say it was the overwhelming pressure to re-acclimate into society and a lack of preparation that fueled his failure. Debate also exists about whether the motivation for his latest offenses was sexual.
Although not a segment of society for which most residents feel sympathy, the reality is that 10,000 to 20,000 sex offenders are released back into the general population each year, according to a report by the Center for Sex Offender Management, a U.S. Dept. of Justice project.
Making sure sex offenders are prepared to enter society properly rehabilitated greatly reduces recidivism and enhances overall public safety, says the report.
But experts argue about how prepared sex offenders are when the cell door opens and whether enough re-entry programs are available.
In the case of Michael Lindsey, a long-term prisoner with the darkest of pasts, the question becomes: Was his future doomed from the start?
Low risk for re-offending
Jan Lindsey met her husband in 2001 while he was incarcerated at the Correctional Industrial facility in Pendleton, Ind.
The relationship started innocently when the two began writing letters, Jan Lindsey said during a recent phone interview.
Jan was doing ministry work at the time, she said, and had been asked by a pastor whether she would correspond with several inmates, including Lindsey.
Right away, she knew he was different, she said. He was extremely educated and positive, never asking the woman for money, as other inmates did. The letters continued for years until the friendship turned romantic. They married several years later at the prison.
Jan knew about Lindsey’s past.
The now-48-year-old man was in prison for rape and child molesting out of Elkhart County and was completing a sentence of 50 years, of which he served half for good behavior. The two cases in which Lindsey was convicted involved a woman and a 13-year-old girl abducted at knifepoint.
“I knew what he did before was terrible,” Jan Lindsey said. “(But) that wasn’t who he was anymore.”
Jan asked a prison psychologist about Lindsey and said the doctor told her he had shown true remorse for his actions and was considered “low risk” for re-offending.
She believed him. So did Blakley, who also sent Lindsey letters and felt the man was “1 billion percent rehabilitated,” he said.
While in prison, Lindsey had taken therapy classes, his wife said. He also completed Sex Offender Management and Monitoring.
All sex offenders in the state must complete SOMM before being released, according to Adam Deming, psychologist and executive director of SOMM.
The time and length of the program depends on the sex offender and his or her level of risk, says Deming, but much of the treatment focuses on cognitive behavior therapy, accountability, and formulating a relapse prevention plan.
Individual Indiana prisons do not have the program available, but inmates are sent to the New Castle facility when treatment is deemed necessary and room is available.
But even with the required prison programs, Jan Lindsey says, her husband was missing something when he was finally paroled in 2008.
Changes in 25 years
The world he entered upon his release was very different that the one he left 25 years earlier, Lindsey said in a shaking voice during his recent sentencing.
At first, he felt he could adjust and do well, he said, but his confidence soon started to waiver.
“It really started to overwhelm me,” he said during sentencing. “I didn’t know how to get gas, how to order food. I started wondering if I should even be out.”
Lindsey had hoped to find work as a paralegal when he was released, but he was not allowed. He also applied for several re-entry programs, he said, but was not accepted.
Instead, he found work at a factory, working an exhausting third shift, says his wife. The couple also had housing issues, as Jan’s home was not suitable for sex offender requirements, and the two had to move.
Stress started to consume Lindsey, Blakley said, and he was not getting along well with his boss at work.
But his marriage was thriving, Jan Lindsey said, adding that her husband was always good to her, making dinner and mowing the lawn. But Lindsey hated having to make so many decisions, she said.
“Life is so fast out here,” Jan Lindsey says. “It’s so slow for them in there. How do you prepare someone for something like that?”
Before leaving prison, Lindsey did complete a re-entry component of SOMM. Prisoners are introduced to the re-entry aspect about nine months before release, according to Deming.
The transitional program helps prisoners review possible housing and employment options as well as addresses parole stipulations they will face, Deming says.
But aside from the nine-month re-entry program, few community transitional programs, halfway houses or community re-entry facilities even consider taking sex offenders.
According to Greg Cress with South Bend Community Re-Entry, specific DOC criteria prevents sex offenders from being allowed into his program.
Traditionally, lower level offenders are eligible for the local re-entry program about nine months before release. The program addresses life skills, substance abuse and job readiness.
A recent addition also now allows prisoners to attend 18 to 24 months before release.
“Some offenders need a little more time,” Cress said. “The longer you’ve been institutionalized, the more difficulties you’re going to have coming out.”
Cress says that at one time, sex offenders were allowed in the program, but that was 20 years ago. Because of the risk to the community, corrections officials generally want sex offenders to serve their entire sentences before being around civilians.
At the St. Joseph County DuComb Center, it’s possible to accept some types of sex offenders, but that doesn’t happen frequently, says interim Program Manager Dave Nickerson.
And Doug Huyvaert with the South Bend Parole Office says parole officers do not send sex offenders to community transitional programs.
“I do not know of any cases in my district,” he said.
Eight months later
Treatment continued for Lindsey on the outside.
He was going to weekly treatment sessions and receiving regular assessments, Huyvaert says, adding there were no red flags in his file until the day Lindsey missed a meeting.
The date was Feb. 24.
Lindsey had been out of prison just eight months.
Later, Lindsey would insist that missing work the night before made him fear he would violate his parole. He says he was overwhelmed, and only wanted a vehicle to run away.
He first confronted a Mishawaka woman with a screwdriver and demanded her car. She screamed, and Lindsey ran away. The man later abducted a 19-year-old woman at knifepoint and drove with her to White County, before leaving her in a field.
Police later arrested Lindsey in Jasper County after a third abduction attempt.
Authorities previously said Lindsey never physically or sexually harmed the 19-year-old woman, and charges to the contrary were never filed.
But a deputy prosecutor said during sentencing that it was untrue that nothing of a sexual nature happened.
The now-20-year-old woman said Lindsey straddled her at one point and forced her to take off her tights before changing his mind and letting her go. Lindsey admitted in court that he thought about doing something sexual, but then came to his senses.
‘Doesn’t cure an illness’
St. Joseph County Superior Court Judge Jerome Frese sees hundreds of sex offense cases come through his courtroom each year and says the crimes can be some of the most heinous.
Frese could not comment specifically on the Lindsey case but spoke generally about sex offenders and treatment resources while incarcerated.
Frese spoke highly of the SOMM program but argued re-entry and treatment services should start early in prison time. “The problem is that, ironically, they don’t give it to someone until their release date,” he said. “What happens is that it’s eight to 10 years before (a person) is allowed to qualify for that program.”
Deming, however, believes the program and services offered by the DOC gives inmates the necessary tools to succeed in society. The re-entry component of the SOMM program is highly effective, he says, adding that in three years, inmates who complete the program have shown only a 1 percent rate of returning to prison with a new sex crime.
But Jan Lindsey wishes more had been done for her husband to prepare him for life in society. She does not believe his recent crimes were sexually motivated.
At the very least, she believes, if Lindsey had had a mentor when released, it would have helped.
The woman once envisioned growing old with her husband, she said, but knows now that can’t happen. Lindsey pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the Mishawaka offenses and six more years in Jasper County.
He remains at the St. Joseph County Jail awaiting transport to prison.
Jan Lindsey said she has not yet filed for divorce but knows she must move on.
Meanwhile, the family of his now-20-year-old victim says Lindsey should have never been back in society.
“That fact that he did what he did tells me he was not reformed,” the victim’s mother said.
Her husband says he has compassion for Lindsey’s sickness and that he has prayed for him, but he also holds much anger.
“I think he’s a very sick person,” the dad said. “Putting someone away for 25 years doesn’t cure an illness.”
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