MOORHEAD -- A man convicted six years ago of sexually assaulting a young girl handed himself a potential life sentence Tuesday when he admitted to a judge he is a sexually dangerous person.
Ronald VanVoorhees, 50, told Clay County District Court Judge Michael Kirk he was taking the step over the objections of his attorney.
In return for the admission, prosecutors agreed to drop a second allegation contained in a civil commitment petition, which maintained that in addition to being a sexually dangerous person, VanVoorhees is also a sexually psychopathic personality.
After accepting his admission, Kirk ordered VanVoorhees be committed indefinitely to a state security hospital.
During Tuesday's hearing, VanVoorhees said he had victimized six people during his life, not more than a dozen, as he alluded to during treatment sessions.
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His attorney, Ryan Magnus, said offenders sometimes exaggerate their crimes because they feel it meets the expectations of officials handling their treatment.
He said VanVoorhees decided to avoid a civil commitment trial because "he really wants to address his treatment needs."
Of the hundreds of high-risk sex offenders Minnesota has committed indefinitely, not one has been released.
After VanVoorhees was sent to prison in 2002 for molesting a young girl in Clay County, he began admitting to other illegal acts extending back to the late 1960s, according to a civil commitment petition filed in Clay County District Court earlier this year, when VanVoorhees was about to be released from prison.
According to the petition, VanVoorhees had illegal sexual contact with two women and 17 children, crimes for which, for the most part, he was never charged.
In an early case, VanVoorhees said he was 8 or 9 when he molested the daughter of one of his mother's friends, a girl who was 1 or 2.
In 2004, he was on intensive supervised release from prison when he had sex with a 16-year-old, the daughter of a woman he had befriended while living in a motel, according to the court petition.
The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead and the Herald are Forum Communications Co. newspapers.
