A convicted child rapist believed to have attacked as many as 100 children is going to be released.
Officials with the Massachusetts Department of Correction told WFXT that Wayne Chapman was recently evaluated by qualified mental health examiners who ruled he is no longer a threat to children.
Unlike Chapman's past bids for freedom, it doesn't appear there was a hearing this time.
The families of Chapman's victims were notified Monday that he could be out as soon as Tuesday.
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"Suddenly he's no longer sexually dangerous simply by virtue, what, that he's older? That doesn't make any sense," said Melanie Perkins.
Chapman has also been suspected in the 1976 disappearance of a 10-year-old Lawrence boy. Perkins was childhood friends with Andy Puglisi and in 1976, Andy disappeared from a Lawrence swimming pool.
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"My heart breaks for his family and for all the victims of Wayne Chapman because there are many. Children in Providence who were raped by him, children in Massachusetts who were raped by him," Perkins said.
Chapman has been fighting for his release since 2004, when he finished a decades-long prison sentence for raping two Lawrence boys.
During a 2016 hearing, a forensic psychologist testified that Chapman believed that little boys wanted to have sex with him:
"The fact that in December 2014, a little more than a year ago, he was still saying he saw these children as willing participants in the assaults seem to us quite a severe cognitive distortion."
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Perkins wants to know why the same system that worked so hard to keep Chapman locked up has no decided to let him go free.
"Chapman is a serial pedophile and very likely a serial child murderer who will hurt and harm children again," said Perkins.
An official with the Department of Correction says Chapman's release is already a done deal and he'll be out by Wednesday.
He won't have to go to a halfway house or group home.
WFXT is working to determine if Chapman will have any conditions or if he will have to register as a sex offender.
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