These convicted sex offenders want a big payday from ex-Gov. George Pataki for locking them in the nuthouse after they finished their time in the slammer — and say that when the case goes to trial this week, the disgusting details of their dirty deeds should not be heard by jurors.
Five men and the estate of a sixth are each demanding $10 million in damages from Pataki over his controversial 2005 decision to sidestep recalcitrant state lawmakers and order the “civil confinement” of dangerous deviants about to be paroled. Jury selection is set for tomorrow.
All were eventually released, but their Manhattan federal court suits say that their constitutional rights were violated and that they deserve payment for “extraordinary humiliation, emotional distress and emotional pain and suffering.”
In a pending motion, lawyers for the plaintiffs also want to keep jurors from learning “lurid and explicit” information about their heinous crimes, saying it would “inflame the passions of the jury against the plaintiffs and confuse the relevant issues.”
The sickos include serial pedophile Kenneth Bailey, 55, of Elmira, who admitted sexually abusing more than 20 prepubescent girls after he befriended their parents, often at church.
The creep even repeatedly sodomized his own 9-year-old daughter while undergoing sex-offender treatment, bizarrely claiming it was his way of showing the girl “love and affection,” according to court papers that he wants kept under wraps.
Also suing is Robert Trocchio, a nutjob diagnosed with bipolar disorder who went to prison for forcing a 7-year-old girl to give him oral sex.
He was also busted as a juvenile for attempted murder with an ax, and the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office sent a 1988 letter to parole officials warning that everyone who worked on his case was “steadfast in their belief that Robert Trocchio would one day kill,” an expert wrote.
Trocchio, 50, has been locked up in the Suffolk County jail since May after getting busted for a fight on Long Island.
The plaintiffs were among a dozen men locked up in high-security mental hospitals after Pataki ordered psychiatric evaluations of all imprisoned sexual predators before being released from custody.
The move came after a paroled rapist stabbed a woman to death in a parking garage at the Galleria mall in White Plains following failed efforts to get the Democratic-controlled state Assembly to pass civil-confinement legislation favored by the Republican governor.
New York’s highest court ended the practice the following year, saying the rapists and pedophiles who were kept locked up deserved legal hearings where they could challenge findings that they were too sick to walk the streets.
State officials said a decision on whether Pataki would be personally on the hook for any damages would not be made until after the trial.
NUTS: The perverts are suing former Gov. George Pataki (above) over their time. (UPI)