Illegal immigration and the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP)

Hayden Michael Richards, 37, is a citizen of Trinidad and has had an order to be deported back there by the U.S. Department of Immigration and Homeland Security since 1999, according to court records. Richards served 10 years in prison for beating and raping two women and attempting to rape two more in the mid-1990s in the St. Paul area. Before his release in 2006, Ramsey County petitioned to have him committed for treatment at MSOP, which spends an average of $120,000 a year on each offender, about 3½ times the cost of prison. And while there, Richards fathered a child with a security counselor at the facility. That woman, Lindsay Wood, who now lives in the Twin Cities area, said that she had a consensual sexual relationship with Richards for eight to nine months inside the facility. Wood was fired in February 2009; Richards was sent back to prison for violating conditions of his parole. He was returned to MSOP. According to records, Richards’ victims were strangers, picked as they were walking alone early in the morning or late at night. In the two cases where he succeeded with the rape, he punched the women and forced them to the ground before raping them. In the two cases of attempted rape, passersby stopped him and he fled.