By Paul McEnroe

Minneapolis Star Tribune

MINNEAPOLIS — A violent patient in Minnesota’s sex offender treatment program admitted in therapy that he was grooming his new roommate for sex, but the staff failed for weeks to intervene or prevent the rape that subsequently occurred.

The sequence of events, detailed in a recent state investigation, will result in the state paying $203,000 to settle a lawsuit by Michael Mrozek, the victim in the 2010 attack.

In addition, Deputy Human Services Commissioner Anne Barry has apologized to Mrozek, telling him by letter that the agency “sincerely regrets the sexual assault that was perpetrated upon you by your roommate.”

This is the second sexual assault in the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) to produce a costly court settlement. In 2011, the state paid a patient $130,000 after he was assaulted by his roommate.

Human Services officials would not comment Wednesday on what steps they have taken to ensure that staff react when they learn that one patient may be sexually targeting another.

The MSOP, created in 1994, has come under intense criticism by patients and advocates, who argue that it fails to provide adequate therapy and amounts to unconstitutional indefinite detention. It houses nearly 700 offenders at prisonlike facilities in Moose Lake and St. Peter — most of them committed to state custody after completing prison terms for sex offenses. A federal judge in St. Paul is set to hear arguments over the constitutional issues surrounding the program in a trial that opens in February.

Interviewed by a state investigator, the accused patient, Brian Sorenson, described the methodical steps he took leading up to the attack inside the Moose Lake facility. At least one therapist knew about his plan in advance, according to the investigators’ report.

“Sorenson told me he was confronted in his treatment group, and he admitted to his therapist that he had gotten up in the middle of the night and laid down on Mrozek’s bed in an attempt to test Mrozek to see what he would do,” the investigator wrote.