William C. Enright - Repeat Sex Offender - Possessed Child Pornography WHILE he was in Civil Confinement

A resident at the state's Special Commitment Center (SCC) for sexually violent predators on McNeil Island has been arrested on a federal charge of possessing hundreds of images of child pornography.

The charge, which stems from images seized from the convicted child molester nearly four years ago, is among several similar cases that have been filed against SCC residents in the past few years. The cases raised alarm among administrators at the facility and prompted several reforms.

William C. Enright, 46, was charged in U.S. District Court in Tacoma last week with one count of possessing child pornography. He was taken off McNeil Island and placed in federal detention Friday, officials said.

Enright has been held at the SCC since 2000 after being found to be a sexually violent predator in Chelan County. He has convictions for child molestation, solicitation of kidnapping and communication with minors for immoral purposes, court records say.

According to charging documents, officials at the SCC found compact discs and DVDs containing sexual images of children in Enright's room in December 2005.

In November 2006, Enright was charged with five counts of possessing child pornography in Pierce County Superior Court. But prosecutors dropped the charges in April 2007 because they couldn't articulate a valid reason that his room had been searched, according to records in that case.

About the same time, officials at the McNeil Island facility were experiencing a rash of incidents of child pornography ending up in the hands of the residents, who all are committed indefinitely to the center for mental-health treatment.

At least four other residents were charged with new crimes for possessing such materials, and officials in early 2008 told The Seattle Times that they were reviewing security procedures and conducting personnel investigations to try to figure out how the material was getting in.

As part of that probe, an investigator from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), W.E.S. Beatty, was invited to the Special Commitment Center to look for problems in the way mail was handled in the mail room of the center, said Special Agent Jerry Styers, a spokesman for the USPIS.

As Beatty found gaps in the system, he also learned of the material that had been seized from Enright, Styers said. The discs were still being held in storage by center administrators.

Beatty interviewed Enright and got his permission to look at the discs, the documents say. Enright insisted that the images were not pornography but "child erotica."

Prosecutors decided to press the case last week because Enright was due for a hearing to review his commitment to the SCC, said Emily Langlie, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney in Seattle.

The postal officials and administrators at McNeil Island say recent changes at the center appear to have slowed the flow of pornography into the facility. But they also acknowledge that it's tough to stop it entirely.

By legal mandate, the SCC is not a prison but is operated by the state Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) as a mental-health facility. As such, the residents' mail cannot be thoroughly searched without reasonable suspicion that contraband will be found, said Steve Williams, a DSHS spokesman.

Residents are allowed to have computers — but no Internet access, and the computers must be "stripped down" to remove any storage device such as CD burners.

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