Burn Thy Neighbor

By DAVID VAN BIEMA

The neighborhood in which Joseph Gallardo's house burnt down isn't posh; despite abutting Seattle's Volvo-saturated suburbs, Snohomish County runs more to pickup trucks. But it is still a community, with lots of children and loving, anxious parents -- which is presumably why someone lit the match.

Gallardo is not home today; the arson was committed to prevent his return after an enforced 33-month absence. Still, the cars cruise by and people shout out. "Freak!" yells one girl. "Finish the job," adds a man -- meaning, burn Gallardo. Voreen Siders and some friends stand 50 yards from the house's embers. They are emphatic: they would never set the blaze. But none pretends to be sad. Nearby hangs a notice featuring a long-haired, mustachioed Gallardo, 35, with a description: . . .VIEWED AS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS UNTREATED SEX OFFENDER WITH A VERY HIGH PROBABILITY FOR RE-OFFENSE . . . HAS SADISTIC AND DEVIANT SEXUAL FANTASIES WHICH INCLUDE TORTURE, SEXUAL ASSAULT, HUMAN SACRIFICE, BONDAGE AND THE MURDER OF YOUNG CHILDREN. The sheet -- not a wanted poster, since Gallardo has served his time -- was distributed by the sheriff's office. Siders gestures at a gaggle of radiant grade-school girls. These are his type, she remarks. Another car passes: someone yells, "Let him burn!"

Several things were illuminated by firelight last week: that Gallardo was not welcome; that someone would commit a new crime to stress that; and that it is hard to write good law accommodating the popular belief that once a sexual predator, always a sexual predator.

In 1986, Gallardo's girlfriend discovered him engaged in oral sex with her 10-year-old daughter; but she declined to file charges, and the case was dropped. Then in 1990, deputies responding to another complaint at the house (owned by Gallardo's father) found what Snohomish County sheriff's office spokesman Elliott Woodall describes as "a lot of very disturbing material of a cult nature, a satanic nature and a pornographic nature, all oriented toward young females." They reopened the statutory-rape case involving the 10-year- old, and Gallardo pleaded guilty in 1991.

He was a model prisoner at the Twin Rivers Corrections Center, with two exceptions: first, he opted out of a program for sex offenders -- since he would not be in jail long enough to complete it. More alarming was the art he drew in his cell -- "pornographic pictures of children," says Janet Barbour, Twin Rivers superintendent, "and pictures showing violence being done to children."

Elsewhere, this might have had no official consequence. But in 1990, Washington responded to a rash of gruesome sex crimes with the bold and much debated Community Protection Act, addressing sexually violent predators. Its most controversial provision -- that at the moment of their release, habitual, violent sexual offenders may be reincarcerated indefinitely for "treatment" -- did not apply to Gallardo. But another clause permits local authorities to warn of a former "predator's" arrival in town.

The sheriff's office decided to exercise that option. "This guy has got some real problems," says Woodall. "He's a threat to the neighborhood, and we want them to know." At a tense meeting, county officials could do little but advise parents to warn children about strangers. Of the fire, Woodall says, "This is the first time we've had someone break the law and burn down a house. Everybody's on a learning curve."

The Washington State A.C.L.U.'s Jerry Sheehan says the law "generated exceedingly dangerous vigilante conduct ((and)) is likely to be found unconstitutional." Still, mass culture and some experts view violent sex offenders as irredeemable monsters. Rutgers University law professor emeritus Alexander D. Brooks thinks that longer sentences should reflect this. "To put men like this in institutions is rough on them," he says, "but you have to tip the scales in favor of women and children."

Maria Gallardo believes the scales have been tipped enough against her younger brother. Beyond maintaining that he was "railroaded" into his 1991 guilty plea, she says of his violent drawings and writings, "He's plagued by nightmares. I was too, for a long time. He would write down the dream and how he felt during it, to see where this madness was coming from." It was self- therapy, she says; only the police "took it upon themselves to believe that they were things he wanted to do, or had done and just hadn't been caught." In that way, "they lit the fire of the people that lit the fire to my father's house."

Joe has joined a brother in New Mexico. The neighbors there know everything, thanks to the media. But should Joe move again, only some 20 states require former sex felons to register, and few governments announce their presence. Gallardo could then, for better or worse, join a community where no one will be aware of his past.

With reporting by David S. Jackson/Seattle and Ratu Kamlani/New York