Jacques: Success Story or Threat

By Sam Hemingway, Free Press Staff Writer • August 4, 2008

Michael Jacques of Randolph swore he was a changed man when he appeared before Judge Amy
Davenport on a Monday afternoon in October 2004.

“My life had been pretty much kind of a mess up until the point when I was — found myself in jail,”
he told Davenport, according to a transcript of the Oct. 18, 2004, proceeding.

Jacques testified that, because of the sex offender treatment programs he took in jail and while on
probation, he was no longer the person who had kidnapped and repeatedly raped a high school senior
in 1992 and sexually molested a younger female family relative for years as a teenager back in the
mid-1980s.

“Some of the things that were identified right in the very beginning was my own anger issues
surrounding my own ... abuse and from that stemmed, you know, my attitude toward people in
general, actually, but particularly towards women,” he told the judge.

Now, thanks to the treatment he’d received, he knew how to control those improper impulses and
didn’t think he needed to be on probation any longer, Jacques claimed.

“They’re internal checks like going through the day,” he said in his testimony, describing how he kept
himself in check. “You do it without even thinking. ... You know, I’m upset about this; all right, am I
just upset about that or is anything else going on? ... Is there any other thoughts popping up or any
other ideas or images?”

Jacques’ testimony, and that of his probation officer, Richard Kearney, who cast Jacques as a “success
story” for sex-offender treatment, were persuasive. Judge Davenport agreed to reduce the probation
time in Jacques’ sentence for the 1992 rape by seven years.

Today, Davenport’s ruling and Kearney’s actions are facing harsh scrutiny — including calls for
reforms in the way Vermont handles child sex predators — following revelations that suggest Jacques
might have misled them and others about being a new man.

Police investigating the role of Jacques in the death of his 12-year-old niece, Brooke Bennett, say
Jacques coerced a 14-year-old female relative to engage in repeated sex acts with him spanning a
period that included the 2004 probation hearing before Davenport.

By the time of that hearing, according to police affidavits, Jacques had also formed an Internet sex
ring he called Breckenridge — police still aren’t positive if it was real or imagined — that preyed on
young girls. Police believe Jacques kidnapped Brooke to induct her into his Breckenridge program.

Jacques and Brooke’s former stepfather, Raymond Gagnon, remain in federal custody as the
investigation into their roles in her disappearance and death continue. Gagnon, a resident of San
Antonio, has been charged with obstruction of justice in the case.

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No one has been charged with Brooke’s murder. Her body was found in the woods July 2 about a mile
from Jacques’ home.

An ‘organized psychopath?’

Davenport and Kearney were not alone in believing Jacques had changed, according to court records.

Documents reviewed by The Burlington Free Press show his brother, his wife — even a Montpelier
psychologist who counseled Jacques after his release from prison in 1997 — were convinced his
deviant sexual impulses were a thing of the past.

“He recognizes that his sexual offender issues and risk remain,” the psychologist, Saul Schoenberg,
wrote in a Nov. 14, 2000, letter to Paul McNaughton, then Jacques’ probation officer.

“He has demonstrated that he is able to utilize a wide variety of both cognitive behavioral and
dynamic understandings and skills around controlling that risk,” Schoenberg continued. “He also
reports that he has developed a significant support system that is able to provide him necessary
feedback and information if risk levels should increase.”

Schoenberg, citing patient confidentiality, declined to discuss the particulars of his 2000 assessment of
Jacques. He did say people who fit the definition of “organized psychopath” are adept at keeping their
true selves hidden.

“We have individuals, a small percentage, who are very good at manipulation and at being less than
honest and straightforward,” he said. “Trying to find and identify these people is often very, very
difficult.”

Schoenberg said Jacques was provided counseling on how to keep his deviant sexual impulses in
check but, if the recent police affidavits are true, he apparently made a conscious decision not to use
those skills. Still, Schoenberg said the treatment Jacques received was solid and responsible.

“I wish I could reveal what else I had written about his case, but I can’t,” Schoenberg said. “I feel I
did everything I should have. I hope what’s happened leads to a reasonable dialogue, not finger-
pointing and scapegoating.”

The court file also contains an Oct. 15, 2004, letter from Jacques’ younger brother, Brian Jacques,
now a lawyer in Topeka, Kan. The letter, addressed to Davenport, said the two men were in regular,
weekly contact by telephone and e-mail, and described how much Michael Jacques’ perspective on
life had changed.

“I suspect that the changes I have seen in Michael are partially the result of age, but I also believe
having gone to prison and having received the counseling he had while in prison have had a
substantial impact on him,” the letter said.

Brian Jacques declined to comment on the letter and his brother’s predicament last week and asked
that he and other members of Jacques’ family not be contacted by reporters again.

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Jacques’ wife, Denise, also thought her husband’s sexual-predator tendencies were a thing of the past.
She testified at the Oct. 18, 2004, hearing before Davenport that her husband’s determination to face
his problems was an inspiration to her. The couple began dating after his release from prison and were
married in 1998.

“I believe because of my involvement with him I’m a much better person today,” Denise Jacques told
the judge, according to the hearing transcript.

“There are times when I have felt like very overwhelmed and I can’t do this, I can’t go on — and then
I think to myself, how can I say that knowing that this man that’s my husband struggles with
something every day of his life, that what I’m hemming and hawing over ... is nothing compared to
what he has done and accomplished in his lifetime.”

Denise Jacques also declined to comment about her remarks when contacted by the Free Press last
week.

A risk to reoffend

Not everyone believed Jacques’ claim that he had been rehabilitated.

The Free Press review of the court file from the 1992 rape case contained a letter from his former
probation officer, Paul McNaughton, expressing concerns about Jacques’ conduct following the
completion of the prison portion of his sentence in 1997.

“Mr. Jacques has engaged in risky, manipulative and deceitful behavior since his release,”
McNaughton wrote in a 1997 letter to Judge David Suntag, explaining why additional supervision
conditions were needed now that Jacques was out of jail. Suntag was the presiding judge in Vermont
District Court in Chelsea at the time.

“He has reportedly taken an intoxicated female stranger to his grandfather’s house, to ‘drop off his
dog,’ which replicates certain aspects of his most recent offense,” McNaughton wrote.

In the 1992 rape and kidnapping case, the victim was supplied drinks at a Barre bar by Jacques, who
later handcuffed her as she was walking to her car. Police said during the hours that followed, he
forced her to engage in multiple sex acts in woods near his Randolph home, at times holding a knife to
her throat and threatening to kill her.

McNaughton also said Jacques had told him he had become engaged to a Filipino woman “via
correspondence” without ever having met or actually spoken to her.

“He continues to engage in various fantasies and misconceptions,” McNaughton’s letter said. “It is my
belief that Mr. Jacques presents a major risk to re-offend, and is a threat to the community in that
regard.”

McNaughton retired while Jacques was still on probation. He now lives outside Vermont. Efforts to
reach him for comment last week were unsuccessful.

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The court file from the 1992 rape and kidnapping case also contains documents detailing items police
seized during the investigation of the incident that included handcuffs, pornographic movies and a
lingerie catalog.

The seized items also included letters Jacques had written. One was addressed to a former girlfriend
and described how he once violently raped a girl in Arizona. Another, found in his vehicle, appeared
to have been written around the time of the rape.

“By the time you read this I will be on my way to a happier place ... . I will be with my father,” the
letter said in part. Jacques’ father had died of cancer.

Robert DiBartolo, an assistant state’s attorney for Orange County who prosecuted the 1992 case, tried
to get the evidence included in Jacques 1993 trial on four charges relating to the rape and kidnapping,
but the judge suppressed the items.

The trial was averted when Jacques agreed in June of 1993 to plead no contest to aggravated assault
and kidnapping and was given a 6- to 20-year prison sentence.

Eleven years later, DiBartolo argued in vain to Judge Davenport not to reduce Jacques’ time on
probation, noting that Jacques still hadn’t provided an explanation for why he had kidnapped and
raped the young woman.

“I have a hard time getting over the fact that this was a horrible sexual assault that involved deadly
weapons,” he told the judge, according to the transcript. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable for him to
have to meet with a probation officer monthly for the remainder of that maximum term. ... I think that
it’s a small price to pay for what he did.”

DiBartolo was on vacation last week and did not respond to a message requesting an interview. Kevin
Griffin, the lawyer who represented Jacques on the 1992 rape and kidnapping case, also did not
respond to a request for an interview.

Contact Sam Hemingway at 660-1850 or e-mail at shemingway@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com

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