WOODSTOCK — Prosecutors will oppose a plan to release from prison a 70-year-old man who has spent most of his life behind bars after he murdered a 3-year-old Harvard girl in 1962.
Attorneys presented a detailed plan Thursday for releasing Gary Welsh from a state facility for sexually violent persons. The release would be under strict conditions.
McHenry County Judge Sharon Prather can accept the proposal, modify it or reject it outright after a hearing March 18, Welsh’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Rick Behof, said.
Despite the plan’s conditions, the Illinois Attorney General’s office will be “arguing as strenuously as we can against his release,” said Cara Smith, the office’s deputy chief of staff.
Prather ordered the proposal after a hearing in which two psychologists testified about Welsh’s pedophilia and the public danger he presented.
One recommended Welsh be released with restrictions such as wearing an electronic monitoring device and attend counseling. The other testified that Welsh no longer was a “substantial risk” of re-offending, largely because of his age.
This proposal incorporates both monitoring by a team of professionals and continued sex-offender and alcohol treatment.
If approved, Welsh would be placed in housing in the Rockford or Chicago areas and only leave the housing for treatment, job-hunting and other approved activities for at least 30 days, according to the proposal.
Welsh’s travel routes would be approved in advance, and he would be banned from bars, having a home computer, accessing the Internet and having contact with any children without prior approval, according to the proposal.
He would be assigned GPS monitoring equipment, and his phone calls and possibly his finances would be monitored. If he is capable of working, he would be expected to look for a job and pay what living and treatment expenses he could.
But, officials also would help him apply for government and other assistance given his age and minimal work history, according to the proposal.
Authorities have said Welsh suffocated a 3-year-old with a pillow after he raped her in September 1962, when he was 23. Welsh had been rooming with the little girl’s family for about a month. He was left in charge of her and her two brothers while her mother was hospitalized and her father fetched her aunt to watch the children on a more permanent basis.
Authorities also have indicated Welsh molested a 10-year-old female cousin in 1953, when he was 13, and raped his 12-year-old sister in 1956, when he was 17.
Welsh served 31 years in prison for the Harvard girl’s murder before being sent to a secure mental health facility.
By JILLIAN DUCHNOWSKI, [email protected]
Read the original article from the Northwest Herald.
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