A convicted pedophile who targeted children as young as five in Sacramento, California, was granted early release under a law the state’s Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom signed in 2020.
Fifty-seven-year-old Gregory Lee Vogelsang had been sentenced to 355 years in prison after being convicted of kidnapping and molesting several children between the ages of five and eleven in the 1990s, the New York Post reported Friday.
A three-person board granted him parole in November, and the Post noted the law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed allows inmates who are 50 years and up and who have served 20 or more years behind bars to receive parole consideration.
“Vogelsang was convicted on dozens of felony counts, including a lewd act on a child, kidnapping a child to commit a lewd act, and lewd act on a child with force or violence,” the article noted.
In response to Vogelsang being granted parole, Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho said, “This inmate will molest again, and yet this parole board is letting him out,” according to ABC 10.
During his parole hearing, Vogelsang reportedly said, “When I don’t view a child as a sex object, I don’t want to become aroused, but I know it’s always going to be there.”
The pedophile has blamed alleged abuse by his father when he was a child.
Now, authorities want the elderly parole program changed, and Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper said “The parole board is letting us down; they are horrible. After this case and the Funston case, they need to be gone, period,” according to the ABC 10 article.
Child predator David Allen Funston, who was serving three life sentences, was granted parole and ordered to be released in February under the “Elderly Parole Program,” but was jailed in another county regarding separate crimes prior to being freed, Breitbart News reported.
The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday detailed Vogelsang’s crimes against children, saying he molested at least six boys after using grooming tactics to gain access to them by building trust with their parents, inviting them to sleepovers, and taking them on outings.
“In one case, a child reported Vogelsang persuaded him to get into his vehicle under the pretense of helping pick out a gift. The child was driven to a residence and repeatedly assaulted despite crying and asking him to stop,” the agency said, adding, “Another victim spent the night at Vogelsang’s home nearly every weekend for years because he was friends with Vogelsang’s family. During those visits, the abuse occurred repeatedly over an extended period of time.”
In a social media post, the department said because of the parole board’s decision, the pedophile is “headed to a neighborhood near you.”
“California’s elderly parole system is broken. The public deserves to know how decisions like this are being made,” the agency added.
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