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Oregon Prison Romance Nets Probation/Community Service

Oregon Prison Romance Nets Probation/Community Service

A prison romance earned a female Oregon prison contractor a felony conviction, probation and 80 hours of community service.

Fifty-seven-year-old Sharon Simovic was a contractor at the Columbia River Correctional Institution (CRCI), a minimum-security prison in Portland, Oregon. As the prison’s Education Coordinator, she helped prisoners plan course work to earn high school equivalency diplomas (GEDs).

The Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) began investigating Simovic when prisoner and staff reported suspicions about the way she behaved with her clerk, Joshua Dennison, a 32-year-old prisoner.

Ultimately, investigators discovered notes passed between them and letters mailed “in extremely large quantity,” said Don Ress, a Multnomah County deputy district attorney who prosecuted Simovic. No physical relationship was revealed, so Simovic was convicted of only Official Misconduct in the First Degree, rather than being prosecuted under Oregon’s new custodial sex abuse statute.

Source: The Oregonian.

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