Electronic Monitoring Procedures Remain Unclear Following Attack

Teen accused of raping pregnant CSU student while free on home monitoring

Three days after revelations that the suspect in a brutal kidnapping and rape had been free on home monitoring at the time of the attack, Cook County authorities would not say exactly how that system is supposed to work.

The questions were first raised Sunday, when prosecutors revealed that 17-year-old Aaron Parks -- the suspect in the Sept. 10 kidnapping and rape of a Chicago State University student -- was free on home monitoring from a previous offense at the time of the attack. After repeated inquiries about how someone on electronic monitoring could leave home and commit such a violent offense without someone noticing, Rose Golden, the chief of the program, said in an email that "procedures were not followed."

Golden, the director of Cook County's Juvenile Probation and Court Services Department, said the officer responsible for monitoring Parks had been suspended, and that the entire program was under review. But her description of the program seemed to paint a picture of a system where officers only periodically check on the whereabouts of offenders in their charge.

"The (electronic monitoring) software logs individual movements, that EM officers review at the beginning of each shift, before the officers proceed to other tasks," Golden wrote. "The compliance of offenders in the program is periodically verified throughout the course of each officers shift as part of their duties."

Repeated emails and phone calls to Golden and the office of Chief Judge Timothy Evans to clarify whether any real-time monitoring of offenders was actually occurring, went unanswered.

Parks had been free on a juvenile charge stemming from the July abduction of a 28-year-old woman on the South Side. In the latest case, he was charged as an adult.

The father of the pregnant victim, Robert Perkins, says he still feels his family is owed an explanation.

"Someone was assigned to him, but was negligent watching over him," Perkins said. "Had you been watching, this never would have happened. Or if the courts were doing what they were supposed to do, he would never have been allowed out of jail."
 

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