No jail for kiddie ‘predator’
By Dave Wedge,
Boston Herald
State police and victims’ parents are fuming that a Worcester judge
refused to send a “most wanted” serial child rapist back to prison
for fleeing to Florida and repeatedly violating his probation.
Worcester Superior Court Judge John McCann put Winchendon child molester Glen Wheeler on 10 years’ probation and an electronic monitoring bracelet - even though the 56-year-old con has racked up 11 probation violations, has an alias and went on the run for eight months before being tracked down at a Tampa, Fla., mosque. Wheeler was on the state police list of “most wanted high-risk sex offenders.”
“I’m disgusted,” said the mother of a 5-year-old girl molested by Wheeler. “What is the justice system there for? He should have been put back in prison.”
A divorced father of two, Wheeler was released from prison in 2004 after serving nearly five years for molesting and taking nude videos of seven young girls and boys over several years. The victims were friends of Wheeler’s daughters.
He has refused a court order to register as a sex offender and even filed a lawsuit against the state, claiming that the order violated his civil rights. The suit was tossed out.
Wheeler, who converted to Islam and changed his name to Shareef Qadeer while in jail, became a concern for state probation officials after they discovered him living in a Roxbury mosque with several families and their children. In the fall of 2004, he disappeared, sparking an eight-month hunt by the State Police Violent Fugitive Apprehension Unit.
“I put a tremendous amount of time into tracking him,” said Trooper Matt Aumais of the fugitive squad.
Aumais tracked him to Tampa, Fla., where Wheeler was arrested at a mosque June 6, 2005 by U.S. Marshals. He fought extradition and remained in Florida for nearly four months, including a stint in a mental hospital after stabbing himself 20 times with a pencil.
When he was brought before Judge McCann on March 3, prosecutors from Worcester District Attorney John Conte’s office sought to have him sent back to prison for up to 10 years, but McCann opted for 10 years’ probation and the bracelet. Wheeler is being held in the Nashua Street jail on $500 bail pending a March 28 hearing on charges of failing to register as a sex offender.
“I think it’s typical of what we’re seeing now and it has to stop,” said Laurie Myers of the victims rights group Community Voices. “Pedophiles are the most likely to reoffend and we’re letting them back out onto the streets.” State police Lt. Kevin Horton of the fugitive squad said the case is “another example” of flaws in the state’s sex offender registry.
“Failure to register is not being taken seriously in this state,” Horton said. “This man is a predator and I don’t think a bracelet is going to stop him from being a predator.”
For the victims’ families, the possibility of Wheeler’s release is infuriating.
“They’ve had their innocence robbed of them,” said the mother of three victims. “We trusted him and he used our children for his sickness and addiction. Our concern is that he will again do this.”