Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 29, 1993 TAG: 9305290325
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"I don't know for sure whether I did it or not, and it's driving me over the edge to think that I could have done something . . . as hellish as that," Leonard E. Gibson had written in a letter to the child's mother.
Gibson confessed for the first time on Friday, pleading guilty in Roanoke Circuit Court to performing oral sex on the 4-year-old in December.
Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Wanda DeWease said the girl was Roanoke's youngest victim of sexual abuse in recent years.
But she was not Gibson's first victim.
In May 1990, Gibson was released from prison on mandatory parole after serving half of an eight-year sentence for sodomizing a 9-year-old girl.
Authorities say the two offenses were strikingly similar: Gibson chose a victim that he had some authority over, then claimed a memory lapse when later questioned about the abuse.
Gibson never confessed in statements to police about the December incident. "I felt like those children were mine," he told police, refering to the 4-year-old victim and her younger brother. "And by God, I'd kill anybody that done anything like that."
But as part of an agreement reached Friday, Gibson pleaded guilty to sodomy after prosecutors agreed to drop additional charges of aggravated sexual battery and taking indecent liberties with a child.
He faces life in prison, plus 12 years of suspended time for his 1986 sodomy conviction.
Detective D.K. Mays of the Roanoke Police Department testified that he interviewed the victim on Dec. 7, 1992, two days after the incident.
The 4-year-old told Mays that Gibson was baby-sitting at their Southeast Roanoke home while her mother was out of town for the day.
She said Gibson called her into his bedroom, instructed her to fondle him and then performed oral sex on her.
Police were called after the 4-year-old told her mother later in the day. The mother said Friday that she knew at the time that Gibson had been in prison on a sex charge, but said he misled her about the details.
"I thought it was a case of statutory rape," the mother said. "But the fact remains that I was aware of it. . . . I had no idea my 4-year-old was in danger, but I should have known better."
The mother's name was being withheld to protect the victim's identity.
It was easy for Gibson - a polite 40-year-old who even police say is a nice guy in other respects - to gain the mother's trust, she said.
"He's a monster, but you can't see that from what he presents," she said. "What he presents and what he actually is are two different things.
"I was easy prey, I fell for it and now we're paying the price," she said. "He took her innocence and the trust that we all had in him."
The woman said she discovered Gibson's past one day when she was going through some of his belongings and found documents from a sexual-offender program he attended while in prison.
"He said that he was rehabilitated," she said.
But according to Isaac VanPatten, director of the Roanoke Area Sex Offenders Program, most sexual offenders released on mandatory parole receive little or no follow-up treatment outside prison.
"That's one of the unfortunate gaps in the system," he said.
VanPatten did not know the details of Gibson's case. But in general, he said, it takes at least three years of intensive treatment to "break through" to most sex offenders.
Counselors recognize that there is no cure for a pedophile's sexual attraction to children; the approach instead is to teach them how to control their problem, he said.
VanPatten said it's not unusual for people like Gibson to claim memory loss as a "self-serving" form of denial.
After police learned of the child's accusation, they found that Gibson kept a cardboard box full of pornographic magazines and a notebook filled with sexually explicit stories he wrote about young girls.
When Gibson learned police were looking for him, he fled to Florida. He contacted police in January and turned himself in.
Gibson has since been in jail, and was placed in solitary confinement for his own protection after other inmates learned of the charges against him, according to defense attorney Al Wilson.
The victim's mother hopes the criminal justice system will be equally outraged by Gibson's actions.
"I hope they see him for what he is," she said, "because I don't want to see another family taken in."
by CNB