His family worries about him, Basile jailed for public lewdness

— Photo from Sean Quinlan

Frederick Basile

ALBANY COUNTY — Frederick Basile, who graduated from Guilderland High School five years ago, faces public lewdness charges in Albany City Criminal Court.

In Albany County’s jail since his arrest, Basile, 23, has told his family and lawyer, Theodore Hartman, that he has been threatened by other prisoners, urine has been thrown at him, and a guard has told other inmates about the charges against him.

One morning last week, Basile’s stepfather said, he and Hartman both dropped everything and went to the jail after getting a call from a friend of Basile, telling them that, if they didn’t arrive there by 11 a.m., other inmates were going to kill Basile.

Basile has told his family he wants to be placed in the jail’s mental-health ward.

Hartman, with Musa-Obregon & Associates, said that, when offenses like these are committed, there must be a mental-health issue at play. He asked, “Why would someone risk this social shaming, economic penalty, penal penalty, and emotional pain, unless they were driven by a compulsion to do this?”

Clinical psychologist James M. Cantor, Ph.D., an expert in sexual offenses, said that researchers do not know a great deal, with certainty, about what motivates exhibitionists. He said that the current framework most often used to understand them is one from Karl Freund, who he pointed out should not be confused with Sigmund Freud, with the latter’s different spelling.

Freund believed, Cantor said, that exhibitionism is one type of larger problem that he termed “courtship disorder.” According to this theory, human males have a natural courtship cycle that consists of visually identifying potential reproductive partners, signaling interest, physical preparatory contact and fondling, and then sexual intercourse.

Freund believed that problems in the identification phase give rise to voyeurism; problems in the signaling phrase give rise to exhibitionism; and problems in the preparatory contact phase give rise to toucherism (sexual gratification gained from rubbing one’s hands on an unconsenting partner) and frotteurism (sexual gratification gained from rubbing one’s pelvis against an unconsenting partner).

In court

A Sex Offender Registration Act hearing scheduled for Wednesday was adjourned to Aug. 31, so that lawyers on both sides could include his most recent arrest — by Albany Police on Aug. 8 — in what the court termed a “global resolution” of all of the charges against him.

Basile has four open charges, from three arrests in Albany and one in Colonie, for exposing himself and masturbating in two cases, exposing himself “in a lewd manner” in a third case, and exposing himself and shaking his penis at the complainant in a fourth case. All of the acts were allegedly done with the intent of being seen by the complainants, who were all strangers to Basile; they were adult women in two cases; a 16-year-old girl in one case; and two girls, ages 10 and 11, in another.

Basile was to remain in Albany County’s jail until all of the charges could be settled, Judge Rachel L. Kretser said Wednesday afternoon in a small hearing at which about eight members of Basile’s family and the attorneys from both sides were present. “The People are seeking additional time,” Kretser noted.

Meanwhile, Basile’s attorney and family are worried about his state of mind and his safety.

Basile was not in the courtroom, although he had been brought over from the jail and was in police custody in the building’s basement. Kretser said that he would not appear, since he was “waiving his right to bail and his right to appear in court, in an effort to obtain global resolution.”

Afterward, in the hallway outside the courtroom, Basile’s family spoke of their frustration. They say, and Hartman echoes, that Basile has told them numerous stories about being threatened by other inmates and harassed and mocked by jail guards. They all agree that Basile has asked numerous times to be moved to the jail’s mental-health ward, for his own safety and so that he can begin to be evaluated and start to receive whatever treatment is found to be necessary.

But until Tuesday he remained in the jail’s general population.

Jail options

On Tuesday, The Enterprise asked Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple if it was true that Basile had been threatened and asked for and been denied a transfer to the mental-health unit. Apple promised to look into it, adding that many inmates request a move to the mental-health unit, because it’s “newer and nicer” and advising that, if Basile is worried about his safety, he should request protective custody.

However, Hartman said that Basile does not want protective custody because it is too much like solitary confinement, which can, he said, sometimes cause severe mental breakdowns.

Apple said that protective custody involves being alone in a cell 23 hours a day, with one hour a day available for solitary exercise and moving about freely, still apart from other inmates. He said that people in protective custody can still see the television on their tier. Inmates in protective custody can have books and can request that a computer be wheeled over to the cell, so that they can do legal work.

Quinlan told The Enterprise that he had spoken to Basile by phone Wednesday night and that Basile told him he had signed a document, stating he did not want to be put in protective custody; 20 minutes after signing, he was taken into protective custody, Quinlan said.

Apple said that prisoners are assigned to the mental-health unit only done in cases in which a mental-health professional evaluates an inmate and recommends placement in that unit.

The sheriff responded to The Enterprise later on Tuesday, saying that he had checked into it, and that Basile had denied wanting to move to the mental-health ward, and had also denied claiming that he had been threatened by other inmates.

This perplexed both Hartman and also Basile’s stepfather, Sean Quinlan. “He has begged me, over and over, to get him onto the mental-health unit,” Quinlan said outside the courtroom.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Hartman told Basile’s family members that the reason they had not received their daily telephone call on Tuesday evening was that Basile had been moved to protective custody.

Quinlan said that Basile suffers from depression, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, and oppositional defiant disorder, and had not been given his medications for these conditions over the first week of his incarceration; Quinlan was unsure if Basile was receiving the medications yet, as of Wednesday.

Hartman said on Wednesday that he had no way of knowing if a thorough mental-health evaluation of Basile had ever been done. “They won’t answer my calls,” he said of officials at the jail’s mental-health unit, where he said he had left two messages without receiving calls back.

“If that [a mental health evaluation] has happened, I’m not aware of it,” Hartman said. “They could clarify it by calling me back. But I can’t get answers from anybody,” he said.

Hartman told the family that the next step might be to file a motion to get Basile into the mental health unit. “We can do that,” he said.

If Basile signed something, declining to move to the mental-health unit, he would like to see the document, Hartman said.

Quinlan wondered aloud if jail officials had asked Basile the questions in a way that was readily understandable. He and other family members could not understand why Basile would have told guards or jail officials that he did not want to go onto the mental-health ward, unless he had misunderstood their questions or felt pressure from them.

“He has been begging us to get him in there,” his Quinlan said.

“There’s times when he has called me on the phone, crying. I’ve told him, ‘Stay near the guards. Stay out in the open,’” his stepfather said. Intimidation of Basile, Quinlan said, have included threats about “beating his ass” and “beating his ass in the shower.” Guards, Quinlan said, have called him a pedophile and a “piece of shit,” and have told him he “smells like shit.”

Hartman went down to the courthouse’s basement to speak with Basile after Wednesday’s hearing. He returned and said that Basile claimed that, since being moved to protective custody and a different tier on Tuesday, he had had urine thrown on him by another inmate and a guard had been “running around telling people the charges against Basile.”

Quinlan said that correctional-facility officers have a tough job, but that there are just two roles they should play: one, protecting, and two, keeping tensions low. He said, referring to all inmates, “These guys made a mistake, but they’re still human.”

Hartman said that he did not know the layout of the jail well enough to know how it was possible for another inmate to have spilled urine on Basile if he was in protective custody.

“Feeding frenzy”

Hartman said that in at least one case the evidence was shaky, citing that in one lineup, “The victims were not sure it was him,” he said. Hartman noted that, in the two 2015 cases, the complainants had lived in the same neighborhood as Basile, and may well have seen him pass by many times on the street, which could have accounted for why they felt a vague sense of recognition when seeing him in a lineup.

The defense attorney also said, “Once someone has been accused of something like this, it becomes a bit of a feeding frenzy. Everyone comes out of the woodwork and says, ‘That’s the guy who did it.’ Especially if his face is on social media or on television, everyone says, ‘That’s the guy who did it.’”

There have been accusations against many other people in the Albany area for this kind of offense, Hartman said; it’s more common than people think. Even if Basile pleads guilty to some of the incidents, that does not mean, Hartman said, that every allegation after that point is going to be true.

Hartman said, “I’m not saying he doesn’t have a problem, but there are a lot of false positives when it comes to this kind of thing.” The attorney said he does not know if Basile actually committed each of the offenses — ”I was not present,” he said.

But if Basile did, the attorney continued, “Obviously, the family and the defense team are going to try to get him the mental-health help that he needs.”


Corrected on Aug. 19, 2016: We originally described Theodore Hartmann as a public defender; he is actually in private practice with Musa-Obregon & Associates.

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