www.palmbeachpost.com/pbcsouth/content/local_news/epaper/2005/09/23/s1a_myth_0923.html
How a 'high risk' sexual predator moved in with few learning his story
By Susan Spencer-Wendel
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 23, 2005
LANTANA There's a myth about the man who lives in the mint-green house on the playground.
It's easy to believe in this lush enclave of Hypoluxo Island. With water views and verdant lawns. With the beach a walk away and the charm of Old Florida all around.
The man in the mint-green house had sex with a girl who said she was 18. Or he had sex with a girl who was just under the age of consent, many people believe.
That's all he did. Leave him alone, they say, quick to defend him and his family. He lives with his elderly parents, who have hearts of gold, who are active in a church, who have lived here nearly half a century. "Not just good citizens, great citizens," Lantana Mayor David Stewart calls them.
But the couple's 45-year-old son did not have sex with a girl who said she was 18.
It was far more pernicious than that.
This may be the age of awareness of sexual predators and offenders. Neighborhood alerts. Online registries. Congress down to town councils trying to figure out what to do, how to end horrible headlines like those of little Jessica Lunsford.
Yet the myth of McKinley Park still spread.
And residents who wanted to know what the man really did had difficulty finding out.
The mint-green house is 50 steps away from the foot of the blue plastic slide, where moms congregate at morning playtime or dads bring children on after-dinner strolls.
The house has colorful plastic tulips in the flower beds, sea horses on the columns outside, white, wrought-iron curlicue accents. It's the friendliest-looking one on the block.
The man moved into his parents' home in November after eight years in prison.
Neighbors recall finding fliers from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in their mailbox or getting follow-up phone calls from the Lantana Police Department making sure they knew that a person convicted of a sex crime was moving in nearby.
The flier had a mug shot: "Donald Ebersold, Registered Sexual Predator." His offense was described as: "Sex Batt/Coerce Child by Adult," two counts.
There was no mention of the child's age or sex. There was no clue as to what happened and when.
It sent a titter through the town. It bubbled up at a homeowners association meeting, spread via scuttlebutt on the playground. Those who knew the Ebersolds were stunned it could happen to such venerable residents.
Donald Ebersold's parents have lived on Hypoluxo Island for nearly 50 years. His father, David, now 82, was a prominent builder, as was his uncle. They are descendants of people who platted the very land.
"You probably can't find a better last name or more historic last name," said a builder who lives nearby. "People said, 'Don't worry. It's Ebersold. It's no big threat.' "
A man who whose property adjoins the Ebersolds adores them. He says he asked the parents and "Donny" about what happened. "Clearly there was an awkwardness there. It's just easier to get over the awkwardness if you talk about things. I wanted them to know that I knew."
The neighbor says he doesn't remember who told him the girl was an older teen who lied about her age.
"Sexual predators obviously fit into a different category," said the man, still unaware of what Donald Ebersold really did.
That man has no children and thought little else of it.
Neighbor Dean Karns does have children, and he wanted to know exactly what Ebersold had done. Earlier this summer, he called the Lantana Police Department and asked. The best thing to do is go to the FDLE Web site, the officer told him, cutting off the conversation there.
Karns was sent back to the sketchy mailbox flier.
Another resident tells of being misled by police. A woman with two young children says she flat asked an officer if Ebersold had had sex with a girl who was not quite 18. "Yes," was the answer she got.
The men were reluctant to probe further.
"I don't want to be the one to go up to Dave and say, 'I don't want your son living there,' " says the builder. "Obviously, I would rather have the government . . . take care of that. I don't want to be the bad guy."
Donald Ebersold lives directly across from the jungle gym equipment for kids ages 5-12. His bedroom window faces the park.
This, despite a seismic shift in public policy when it comes to sexual predators. The nation's highest courts down to town after town are restricting where offenders and predators may live. Boca Raton. Boynton Beach. Lake Worth. Lantana, Ebersold's own town, is expected to approve an ordinance Monday night.
In Ebersold's case, though, there's nothing government can do. Legally he's allowed to be there.
"Unfortunately," wrote his probation officer to a prison official about Ebersold's release location.
The date of the criminal sex acts he pleaded guilty to 1994 was before those laws were passed. There's no court order that says he can't live by a park. And new laws passed since '94 are not retroactive.
There is a court order that says he can't be in the presence of a child under 18 without an adult present who knows the disposition of his case.
A detective at the Lantana Police Department says the agency is doing "everything humanly possible" to monitor the 24 sex offenders and two predators in the town.
Earlier this summer, the Department of Corrections switched from checks every two or three months to once a month. Detective Todd Dwyer and an officer from the Department of Corrections visit Ebersold monthly at his house.
Lantana aggressively notifies neighbors, he said, plus every school, library and beach in town whenever any offender or predator moves in.
Yet when Hypoluxo Island residents had questions this summer about the age and sex of Ebersold's victim and asked the department for answers, they got none.
Officers refused to give specifics then, but have recently reversed course, Dwyer said. They'll now tell the age and sex of the victim when people ask.
Dwyer emphasizes that reports on offenders are public records. Anyone can make a public records request and go to the probation office or the courthouse in West Palm Beach and look at a predator's criminal file.
So a Lantana resident must drive 20 minutes to the courthouse, wait in line, wait hours as a clerk combs the files deleting any information that identifies the victim, pay for that labor time plus up to $1 for every copy a clerk makes to do that.
Then there are lots of specifics.
The detectives' reports are single-spaced troves of evidence beginning after the victim first told her mother that she and Donald Ebersold had had sex.
The girl was 16 when she told her mom.
But it began when she was 6, she told investigators.
Ebersold was a neighbor in Lantana. He befriended the girl, whose mother was raising three children by herself. Ebersold began to date the mother and care for the children, taking a special interest in the youngest girl, according to sheriff's office reports.
He picked her up from school, took her to the beach, taught her to swim. He bought presents a boogie board, a surfboard, a BB gun for her, but not for her siblings, according to the reports.
The girl told detectives that the first thing she remembers is Ebersold putting a porno tape in the television. Then how he'd rub her in the bushes at Lantana Beach or take her by boat to Beer Can Island and touch her. How by the time she was 8 the touching intensified to sexual acts in his bedroom, acts that hurt her, that she didn't like. Ebersold would always say it was "just for two minutes" while atop her, she told investigators.
The girl's family moved up North when she was almost 9. She returned to Florida to see her father. She visited Ebersold and the acts continued. Ebersold visited New York. And the acts continued.
Sometimes he'd stop when she asked him to.
Other times? He left her bleeding from her rectum.
Ebersold told her he loved her and couldn't wait until she was 18.
She was 13 at the time.
Years later, the victim told her mother after a health class at school where they talked of child abuse laws, according to the reports. She said that she thought people who abused children should be castrated, then broke down sobbing.
The victim immediately went for a physical exam, the reports state.
The scarring confirmed her story.
The recorded phone call between her and Ebersold sealed it.
The sheriff's office and New York police charged Ebersold for acts dating back to 1987, including sexual battery on a person under 12 a crime punishable by life in prison.
There were subpoenas, lawyers, depositions, but no trial. Ebersold pleaded guilty in January 1998 to six counts of "sexual activity with a child while in custodial authority" the counts there was medical evidence for. Four counts more than the two listed on his FDLE flier.
Ebersold did not plead guilty to any acts when the girl was under 13. Today, he denies anything happened before she was 13.
In the plea deal, Ebersold got 12 years in prison.
He was out in eight for excellent behavior and went to live on the playground.
His mother says he moved into their house to help care for her and her husband.
Narine Ebersold, 79, says Donald works all day as a construction handyman, then takes care of them at night, driving them to dinner, cleaning the yard. He doesn't drink. He does everything he's supposed to do, including attending his court-ordered therapy sessions on Monday nights.
"He never even goes to the park," Narine Ebersold said. "He is absolutely no threat to any children. He's not attracted to that at all."
She spoke by phone from North Carolina, where she and her husband have been at their cabin since July.
Narine Ebersold says she's never asked her son what happened. She never read the police reports. She has some vague idea. "I didn't want to know. He did a stupid thing with this girl. If you knew her and her mother, you would understand."
Mothers, of course, aren't the best predictors of their child's sexual tendencies.
Therapists are. They are the ones who hear predators' deviant desires. That is, if therapy's working.
Ebersold's therapist submits monthly progress reports to the Department of Corrections.
In a June report to the department, Ebersold's therapist rated him "satisfactory" in attendance and attitude. "Marginal" in participation. "Borderline" in motivation and in overall standing one level away from being at risk of getting kicked out of the therapy program.
And as for current risk status?
"Very high," according to the report.
Adults who sexually desire children are not curable, experts who treat them say. An alcoholic who doesn't take a drink is still an alcoholic. A pedophile who isn't molesting children is still a pedophile.
Not curable, but controllable, they say.
The first step of a relapse prevention plan is reducing "lifestyle risk factors" and "triggers." Blocking out sights that prompt deviant thoughts.
Blocking out the sight of children.
Susan Bollinger is a local sexologist and psychotherapist who has worked with predators and offenders for 33 years. She does not treat Ebersold.
Bollinger has a three-second rule. Her patients have exactly three seconds to remove themselves from any sight of children in public. Doesn't matter if they have a cart full of frozen groceries. When a child gets in the line with them, they have exactly three seconds to get out, she tells them.
Often inside pedophiles' homes there are stacks of pictures of clothed children, modeling in catalogs or at Disney or at the playground, she said.
"Visual stimuli is the strongest trigger of all," Bollinger said.
No predator patient of hers would be living by a playground, Bollinger said.
For his sake.
For everyone's sake.
Donald Ebersold's window overlooking the park is covered now.
The hurricane shutter is screwed shut, casting a dark pall over his bedroom.
The room is filled with fishing, camping equipment. He apologizes for the mess.
Ebersold is polite, personable. The phone rings. It's a sales call; he says to please call back later.
At 45, he's tall and fit with a nice white smile.
He put the shutter on for a hurricane recently, then decided to leave it there. He doesn't want people wondering if he is staring out at them. "Ready to pounce," he says, feigning a clawing lion.
"Except that's not me, that's not anywhere in my heart. If I'm a predator like a lion, then I caught only one gazelle," he said.
Ebersold has large hazel eyes. They well up as he talks of the label, the shunning by people. He's working odd jobs for what he made in middle school, can't get a normal job anywhere. Employers see his status and the interview's over.
PREDATOR.
It's a helluva onerous branding for what he did, he says. Yes, he's an offender. Yes, he made a mistake. Yes, it was 100 percent his fault. She was too young to consent to anything.
But there are murderers who get less time and have fewer restrictions. There's the rock star who fooled around with kids and never got charged, the female teachers who just got probation. There's the man he met in prison who molested his stepson and was out before him, with no predator designation. Ebersold is full of examples of what happened to other people, compared to him.
For eight years, he lived in a concrete cell and thought about what he did.
He would never, ever do anything to go back there, he said. He would take chemical castration drugs if he had any kind of urge.
"I'm a 100 percent different person now." He quit drinking and became a Christian. His daughter is nearly 18. He just wants to work and help her with college and make up for the time he missed. Recently his therapist told him he was considered a "moderate" risk of reoffending, he said. And he's never been ordered into the intensive therapy required of the highest risk predators.
According to Ebersold, he's never told anyone his victim said she was 18. He would not do that, he said, and has no idea where it started.
To him, living on the playground is a non-issue. There are so few people there, it hardly can be categorized as a playground, he said. He never even looks that direction. A giant tree blocks the view from his bedroom window anyway.
"And what fool in their right mind would do an offense right where they live?" Ebersold said.
The girl is a woman now, 24 years old.
So, it seems that Kerri didn't speak with the detective herself, but instead through Annie. That pisses me off since I would have expected my friend to be more aggressive than she has been in this situation. It seems that I told her what to do and "convinced" myself that she did it because it was so important. Unfortunately, I'm on the other side of the state, and I thought it would be more appropriate for her to call. I'm really angry at myself because I KNOW that I wouldn't have had any problem whatsoever making regular telephone calls to that detective. Don't let this happen to you. Don't tell someone else to call and trust that it's gonna happen. CALL YOURSELF and find out what the supervisors are doing to ensure that these animals are abiding by the rules of their release. This guy hasn't been keeping with any sort of rules. He comes and goes as he pleases without any curfew whatsoever. Again, the fact that he is going out boating is outrageous. Does he tell the children that come into contact with him at the docks that he is a sexual predator and isn't permitted to come within so many feet of them? Remember to start a neighborhood watch group and keep a journal of all of his activities. If he breaks curfew write it down. Get enough evidence on him to put him back behind bars. 