A former experienced parole officer asserts that her agency intentionally botched the cases of high-risk sex offenders to comply with the governor’s directive to lower the prison population and the number of those under state supervision.
Rita Flynn, 67, worked for the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision for 42 years, eight of which were spent supervising cases involving individuals convicted of heinous sex offenses.
She stated that cases were purposefully mishandled, including instances in which convicted pedophiles were released from supervision despite red signs in order to commit new sex crimes, and that colleagues were promoted for turning a blind eye and dismissing cases.
Flynn stated that supervisors discouraged her from reporting indicators of abuse in an attempt to make the state’s sex offender supervision program appear successful.
Rita Flynn has two pending lawsuits against Michael Falco and the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
Flynn told the Post, “They are covering up criminal activity by high-risk violent offenders in order to appease Albany and discharge people to appease the governor’s office.”
Flynn, who worked as a parole officer out of DOCCS offices in Westchester and Dutchess Counties from 2007 to 2016 on the agency’s Sexual Offenders Management Unit, requested that the Office of the Inspector General investigate her claims, and included in her letter what she claimed were cases that were intentionally botched:
The administration permitted the transfer of a convicted pedophile incarcerated for child pornography to North Carolina, where he was twice apprehended and charged with multiple counts of child exploitation last year. She stated that the parolee was permitted to go to another state despite being re-investigated for child porn, which according to state law should have prevented him from traveling.
A colleague was promoted after advocating the release from monitoring of a Westchester elementary school teacher convicted of child sex assault. She stated that the recommendation was made notwithstanding the pervert’s lifelong monitoring sentence. Flynn stated, “The [officer] covering this case had clearly cooperated with our administration’s corrupt agenda… and was rewarded with a political appointment to a top agency position.”
After being freed from incarceration for attacking a kid, a “sadomasochist” school administrator was found guilty of failing to register as a sexual offender. Flynn asserts that he should never have been released from supervision, but he did so after the department ignored a report she filed on a guy who broke his parole by speaking on the phone with another convicted sex offender.
A high-risk pedophile convicted of sexually abusing an 8-year-old child was under state supervision when a photo of him in bed shirtless with a toddler on his chest surfaced, according to Flynn. According to Flynn, the administration instructed the officer assigned to the case to “stand down” and not submit a report with the Albany child abuse hotline about the disgusting photo. She reported it and was reprimanded by her agency.
“They deliberately mishandled the supervision of sex offender cases,” she wrote in the letter to the IG. “The agency now functioned as a mule to push the governor’s new agenda that called for emptying out the prison system based on the theory that ‘less is more.’”
Flynn said she was forced to resign in February 2020 after repeatedly speaking out against agency corruption she said began under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and has continued through Gov. Hochul’s term.
The case Flynn said ultimately ended her career involved a serial pedophile who was released to a motel in upstate Liberty — which Sullivan County was paying to house sex offenders — despite her outspoken warnings that he was likely to reoffend and needed a treatment plan.
Flynn had been working in parole for more than 40 years before her career came crashing down due to what she considers whistleblower retaliation.
Michael Falco
Instead, the agency removed Flynn from her special assignment in 2016, but she refused to drop the issue. In February 2020 she was given two choices — either retract her complaint against the department and sign her resignation papers, or face two years in jail for sharing information about her parolees with her attorney — she said.
She signed out of fear and, to her dismay, learned that the serial pedophile at the center of her final case on special assignment was released from supervision late last year, Flynn added.
“I could have drank the Kool-Aid like I was told,” Flynn said. “I could have saved my job, but I wouldn’t be able to put my head down at night. I’m a disgraced officer. That weighs heavy on my heart, but in my head I tried to do the right thing.”
Flynn now has two pending lawsuits against the department and her supervisors including a federal lawsuit alleging free speech and due process violations. She is appealing the federal case after it was dismissed in June by a judge who ruled her free speech isn’t covered under the law when acting as a public employee, not a citizen.
She also has an open whistleblower retaliation case in the New York Court of Claims filed in April 2021 that remains open.
Inspector General spokesman David King said he could not confirm nor deny whether his office was investigating Flynn’s complaints. DOCCS declined comment, citing the ongoing nature of the cases.
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