http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=7907111&page=1
Inviting Sex Offenders Home: When Mom's Relationship Puts Children at Risk
Two Midwest Children Disappeared, Third Killed After Moms Associated With Sex
Offenders
By SARAH NETTER
June 24, 2009-


Losing a child to a sex offender is a mother's nightmare. But what if that
mother is the one who brought the sex offender into her home?

In the cases of at least three Midwestern children reported missing this year,
police have discovered that their mothers had relationships with known sex
offenders.

One little boy was found safe in a motel. One little girl was found buried in a
riverside grave. And the third -- 3-year-old Haylee Donathan --was found Tuesday
thousands of miles away from her home.

Federal authorities hunting Haylee's abductors knew who they are looking for --
her mother Candace Watson, 24, and Robbi Potter, 27, a convicted sex offender
she is accused of helping escape from a post-prison halfway house in Mansfield,
Ohio, May 28.

Police say the two disappeared with Haylee from Watson's Crestline, Ohio, home
May 31, days after Watson, her brother, Haylee's biological father and his
girlfriend allegedly helped Potter leave the halfway house he'd been staying at
since being released from prison three days earlier.

Cyle Watson, along with James Donathan and his girlfriend Nicole Kirkpatrick
have all been arrested and charged with complicity to escape, the same charge
Watson is facing.

But authorities were most concerned with apprehending Potter and getting Haylee
home safe to her grandmother who had been awarded emergency custody in the
little girl's absence.

Assistant Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Andrew Deserto told ABCNews.com that all
three were picked up just outside San Diego after someone recognized them from a
billboard the U.S. Marshals had placed in several states.

Both Watson and Potter have been arrested and are being held in California.
Haylee appeared to authorities to be unharmed saved for a case of what looked to
be chicken pox. She is currently in state custody, also in California.

They had apparently been staying at a Christian ranch for about a week, Deserto
said, adding that Watson could face federal charges for aiding a fugitive.

Potter had two warrants out for his arrest, one for a federal probation
violation stemming from a bank robbery conviction and the other a state
probation violation related to his sex offender status.

Ken Lanning, a consultant and former FBI agent who spent two decades studying
the sexual victimization of children, said that, in general, the first hurdle
for pedophiles on the prowl is access to children. One of the most common ways
to get that, outside of abusing a family member, is to latch on to a woman with
children, often in a romantic relationship.

And while mothers of the abused children run the gamut from being knowingly
involved with the abuse to being completely fooled, Lanning said, most fall into
the category that is hardest for police to deal with -- "mom should have known."

Lanning said that while some would consider a mother's attention to a sex
offender crime enough, some women don't just turn a blind eye to abuse. They
participate.

Lanning added he's heard of some women who actually consent to the predator
having sex with their children, with the stipulation that the predator has sex
with them first.

Those are the cases that are easy to prosecute, he said. Most of the others fall
into a grey area with authorities unable to prove how much about the sex
offender the mother knew and whether or not she knowingly put her children at
risk.

Lanning said he couldn't comment specifically on Haylee Donathan's
disappearance, but he said women who choose to stick by sexual predators, even
at the risk of their own children, have succumbed to the offenders' ability to
prey on their vulnerabilities.

"Adult human beings tend to believe what they want or need to believe," he said.
"Someone to tell her she's pretty, someone to support her.

"The more desperate she is and the greater the need, the more vulnerable she
becomes to this," Lanning said.



'Nothing's Been Proven Yet'
Haylee's grandmother, Mary Watson, said she isn't sure whether her daughter went
on the run with Potter willingly at this point.

"It was like her voice was shaky the last time," Watson said of the last time
she spoke to her daughter the day she disappeared. "And her voice was short."

The last known sighting of Haylee before she was found was at an Ohio Wal-Mart
they day she was reported missing. Deserto said Watson was caught on the store's
surveillance system returning a tent and allegedly stealing some clothes while
Donathan and a child believed to be Haylee waited in the parking lot.

Watson was seen again getting into the passenger side of the truck at a Colorado
gas station June 2, Deserto said. While police believe that Donathan was in the
driver's seat, Haylee couldn't be seen.

Potter's criminal history includes prison time for two counts of sexual battery
and Deserto said he has a history of child sexual abuse.

But Mary Watson said her daughter had no idea of the severity of Potter's crimes
until after she picked him up.

As for the charges against her daughter and son and the others, Mary Watson said
she's not sure what to believe.

"I don't know nothing about them helping" Potter escape, she said. "Nothing's
been proven yet."

But in an interview with the Mansfield News Journal, Cyle Watson, who served his
own prison sentence on a rape conviction, admitted to helping Potter leave the
halfway house, but said he only did so in hopes Potter would get in trouble with
the law -- retribution, Cyle Watson told the paper, for not paying a debt.

"Things are really, really serious. It went from a trick to now," he told the
Journal from inside jail. "He messed with another girl. He might be messing with
my niece."



'He Would Have Done It a Little Sooner'
Lanning said mothers who knowingly admit sex offenders into their lives aren't
knowingly stupid. Women with high self-esteem, good educations and successful
careers are less likely to fall into this trap, he said, but aren't immune.

"The more needy you are, the more you need to believe," he said.

In last month's murder of 5-year-old Nevaeh Buchanan, her mother had
relationships with two sexual offenders who have since been jailed because their
parole conditions prohibited associations with women who have children.

Though no arrests have been made since Nevaeh's body was found in a
cement-covered grave along the River Raisin in Michigan June 4, Monroe County
Sheriff Tilman Crutchfield has called George Kennedy, 39, and Roy Lee Smith, 48,
persons of interest.

Some locals have begun turning against Nevaeh's mother, Jennifer Buchanan, for
giving sex offenders access to her only child.

Buchanan told the Detroit Free Press in an interview earlier this month that she
was "completely innocent" in Nevaeh's disappearance and murder.

Buchanan had been released from prison earlier this year after being convicted
of a 2006 home invasion. She was living in a Monroe, Mich., apartment with her
daughter and mother when Nevaeh disappeared.

"I didn't think it was a crime to have my child around someone," she told the
Detroit Free Press, later adding that "If George wanted to do that, he would
have done it a little sooner. That's the way I feel. But I could be wrong."

She told the newspaper that she had known Kennedy for a couple of years and met
Smith through him a couple months before her daughter disappeared. And while she
was aware of Kennedy's sex offender status, she only guessed the same of Smith
because of the men's association.



3-Year-Old Found Safe, Mother and Sex Offender Arrested
In the kidnapping of a little Wisconsin boy earlier this year, the 3-year-old's
mother was arrested and charged with child neglect after her babysitter, Joseph
Rivera, took off with her son.

Rivera, who had been convicted of second-degree sexual assault in 2003, was
found in a motel room with the unharmed boy and marijuana and THC.

The boy's mother told police that Rivera had sent her text messages threatening
to take her son. But Rivera told police he only took the boy because he was
upset with the child's mother for leaving him home alone for several hours,
according to the police report.

As for Haylee Donathan, her grandmother just wanted to know she was alive. Mary
Watson said she's already prepared for the attention and counseling her
granddaughter will likely need when she comes home.



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