Institute in FOX Chicago News: Sex Offender Acurie Collier Strikes Again, Some Ask Why He Wasn’t Behind Bars

A joint investigation by FOX Chicago News and the Illinois Policy Institute finds the agency in charge of keeping watch on that predator apparently dropped the ball.

By Dane Placko, FOX Chicago News, and the Illinois Policy Institute

A South Side mom discovered a sexual predator hiding in her daughter?s bedroom. A furious struggle ensued, and she hung onto him until help arrived.

“After he saw that I wasn’t going to go down without a fight he tried to jump out the window,? she said. ?I then held on to him.”

But now, the story gets even worse.

A joint investigation by FOX Chicago News and the Illinois Policy Institute finds the agency in charge of keeping watch on that predator apparently dropped the ball.

The predator she fought was 36-year-old Acurie Collier — already a registered sex offender who had served jail time for sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl in 2009.

After his release, a judge ordered Collier be supervised by the Cook County Adult Probation Department, with tight restrictions on his whereabouts.

Asked what goes through her mind when she heard this, the mom said: “I’m speechless. I’m upset. I’m angry. I’m mad.”

Illinois Policy Institute Investigator Lee Williams says sources in the Adult Probation Department tell him the officer assigned to Collier went to his apartment in Stickney on more than 40 occasions — and found Collier was not home, even after his curfew.

But instead of reporting the violations, the officer did nothing.

?He should have had home visits. He should have had after hour visits. He should have had curfew checks, DNA indexing, mandatory counseling. From what we were able to uncover, not a lot of that happened,” Williams said.

“Two or three of these violations should have been enough to get this guy revoked and sent back to jail,” he added.

And because Collier wasn’t sent back to jail, he was able to allegedly pose as a teenage boy on the Internet, making contact with that 13-year-old South Side girl.

On July 30 police say Collier broke into the girl’s bedroom and sexually assaulted her. When her mother walked in he tried to escape out the window. She grabbed his ankles and held onto him until police arrived.
He’s now being held at Cook County Jail on a $1.5 million bond.

The girls mom said: “It saddens me to think that law enforcement didn’t care enough that a sexual predator was not following his rules, and allowed him to stay on the street. Had they followed their rules, my child and I would not had have went through this. My family wouldn’t have to be traumatized.”

The acting director of Adult Probation, Jesse Reyes, didn’t want to go on camera, but told us, “the monitoring was not everything it should have been. It definitely could have been better.” ??But Reyes also said: “I don’t know if all the things had been done properly we wouldn’t be having this conversation. (Probation) isn’t 100-percent infallible.”

Jeanette Castellanos heads the YWCA’s sex violence support services.

She says Adult Probation needs to put its highest priority on monitoring sexual predators.

They should have been much more diligent,? she said. ?And what we know about sexual offenders is they tend to have multiple victims.”

“Monitoring these individuals once they’re released or on probation is extremely important because the recidivism rate is so high,” Castellanos said.

The officer who failed to take action was suspended, but is now back on the job, which mystifies the victim’s mother.

“I believe in second chances,? she said. ?But when it comes to monitoring a sexual predator… it’s just inexcusable to have a second chance.”

Read the article from FOX Chicago News here.