Halfway house protested

By Jeanne Starmack

Center administrators defend its policies.

SHARON, Pa. — Marchers are on the offense against a halfway house for state prisoners and parolees, after two of its residents were charged in sexual assaults against two teen girls.

Administrators of the Sharon Community Corrections Center at 300 W. State St. are on the defense as fliers circulating in the community say its residents are a danger to children. In the 34 years the center has been in the community, the sex assault charges are the first serious allegations against any of the thousands of residents who’ve lived there, they say.

The center, one of four in the western part of the state, helps parolees and inmates about to be released find jobs and get counseling.

The center is facing a community protest as organizers distribute the fliers door-to-door and at businesses downtown. The fliers urge people to attend a rally and march at 10 a.m. Saturday. Marchers will meet in the parking lot outside Reyer’s downtown and they’ll proceed to the center.

Two of the center residents, Bryce Southwick, 25, and John Morris, 28, are accused of following the girls, 15 and 16, on May 31 as they went through town to fill out job applications. The men, who’d befriended the girls before that day, caught up with them in Bicentennial Park.

An affidavit of probable cause on file at District Justice James McMahon’s office says Southwick is accused of forcing the 15-year-old to perform a sex act near the river. He’s charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and indecent assault. Morris is accused of grabbing the 16-year-old and exposing himself to her. He’s charged with indecent assault and open lewdness.

Penny Hout is the main organizer for Saturday’s rally, and she believes there will be a large turnout.

The center residents have too much freedom to move around in the community, she said. She also questions why the center needs to be so close to schools and neighborhoods.

Morris was incarcerated on drug charges and Southwick was in for theft.

Hout said many Sharon residents aren’t even aware that there is a halfway house at the corner of State Street and Irvine Avenue.

But that’s to the center’s credit, said Seaborn White, its director. If people don’t know where it is, then it isn’t drawing attention to itself, he said. “I think that’s a great thing.”

White said residents are monitored in that they have curfews and have to have a destination — they can’t just leave the center and wander. Southwick and Morris were supposed to be going to drug-rehab counseling, he said.

The residents are allowed into the community unsupervised to shop and work, but that’s the point of reintegration, he said. The men who live at the Sharon center are from Mercer and surrounding counties, said Marcia Combine, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections’ regional director for the halfway houses in the western part of the state.

Combine also ran the Sharon center from 1993 to 2005. She said that without halfway houses, there’s less control over the inmates. Leaving them in prisons until their sentences are over, she said, doesn’t help them re-enter society.

She doesn’t agree with isolating sex offenders, saying that no matter where they live, they’re going to be in contact with people. She said the center monitors sex offenders more strictly than other inmates.

Southwick and Morris were placed back in state prisons on $30,000 bonds. If they are found guilty, they will be resentenced on their original crimes as well, Combine said.