Robert Bollett - Repeat Sex Offender - Child Molester

"25% of all sex offenders re-offend within 15 years"
.........Sarah Tofte

A repeat sex offender who molested two Lakeville brothers was sentenced in Dakota County today to life imprisonment, a first for the Minnesota district courts.

Robert Bollett, 43, of Hayward, Wis., will be eligible for parole in 12 years. Bollett is believed to be the first repeat sex offender in Minnesota to receive a life term under a law passed by the state Legislature in 2005, in the wake of the Dru Sjodin investigation.

Bollett was previously convicted of sexually assaulting three boys in Carver, Scott and Hennepin counties. The convictions - Carver in 1988, Scott County in 1990, and Hennepin County in 1994 - involved children ranging in age from 7 to 12.

In August and September, Bollett lived with a Lakeville woman and her two young sons off and on, according to the criminal complaint against him. The woman reported finding Bollett in bed with her older son and sexually assaulting her younger son, and discovered the three showering together.

She expelled Bollett from her home and, at a friend's urging, contacted police.

Bollett pleaded guilty in January to second-degree and fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct. Judge Michael Sovis sentenced him to two concurrent life terms, and based on a pre-sentence investigation, set his eligibility for parole after 12 years.

Bollett was prosecuted under a law that allows life terms without parole for sex offenders who commit certain heinous acts, such as torture and mutilation, or have multiple victims or a history of offenses.

Previously, sex offenders would be eligible for life without parole only if they murdered their victims.

The stricter law was among several measures the Legislature passed following Sjodin's abduction and murder. The University of North Dakota student disappeared from a mall parking lot in Grand Forks, North Dakota in November 2003. Her partially nude, mutilated body was found five months later in a melting snow bank in Crookston, Minn.

On Feb. 8, 2007, a federal judge ordered the death sentence for Alfonso Rodriguez, Jr., a previously convicted sex offender who was found guilty in Sjodin's death.