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A Harrison Medical Center security guard was sentenced last week to nine years in prison for trading cigarettes and vodka for sex with a 15-year-old girl he met at the hospital after she tried to kill herself and sexual contact with her 14-year-old friend, who had run away from foster care.
Before working at the hospital, Dennis Silvano Mallillin, 52, briefly worked for the state Department of Corrections as an officer at a women’s prison near Belfair. He left after six months — in 2011 — when he was accused of attempting to smuggle contraband to a female inmate, according to court documents.
Before sentencing, Mallillin told a psychologist who interviewed him that Harrison “did not know the nature of his dismissal” from Mission Creek Corrections Center.
A prepared statement from Harrison’s parent company, CHI Franciscan Health, said it was aware that Mallillin had worked at the women’s prison, but “we were not notified” of the allegations.
The prepared statement — attributed to Cary Evans, vice president of communications and government affairs for CHI — said security guards undergo “thorough county, state and national background checks.”
Through a spokesman, the company declined to answer follow-up questions about the rigor of the background checks, and no official with the hospital was made available to comment.
“The safety of our patients is our highest priority,” Evans said in the statement. “We reported this incident, quickly cooperated with the police and hope to continue to support the victims and their families in any way possible.”
Mallillin pleaded guilty to two counts of commercial sexual abuse of a minor and three counts of third-degree rape of a child. On Aug. 26, Kitsap County Superior Court Judge Jennifer Forbes sentenced him to 108 months in prison.
In a statement provided before sentencing, Mallillin apologized and wrote that he should have thought about how he would feel if an adult had exploited his own children.
“It was my responsibility to protect these girls and instead of protecting them, I took advantage of the situation they were in and for that I am truly sorry,” Mallillin wrote, according to court documents.
Mallillin started as a security guard at the hospital in December 2017 and met the teen in March 2018 when he was assigned to monitor her “one-on-one” in the hospital’s psychiatric unit, according to his statement to the psychologist, who specializes in treating sex offenders.
Mallillin claimed there had been no guidelines for interacting with patients during his job orientation training and, further, he said he had no reservations about discussing personal information with psychiatric patients, the psychologist wrote in court documents. Mallillin added that he was aware of other security guards providing their personal phone numbers to patients.
The Kitsap Sun provided to Harrison’s parent company follow-up questions about Mallillin’s claims, but the company declined further comment.
In its prepared statement, CHI Franciscan reported its security guards receive 80 hours of training “prior to setting foot in a facility,” along with one to two weeks of on-site, “shadow” training, which it said exceeds the state requirements.
Mallillin said he was monitoring the girl when he gave her his phone number. When she contacted him — he said about a month had passed — she complained she did not receive any medication for anxiety. When Mallillin told her he took medications such as Xanax, a type of sedative with high potential for abuse, she asked for the drug and, “under bad judgment,” Mallillin said he gave the girl a pill.
Mallillin claimed his intentions at first were to help the girl, considering himself similar to a “cool big brother.”
As the two communicated and their relationship progressed, Mallillin said he began providing the girl cigarettes and vodka in exchange for sex.
The second girl, 14, was a friend of the first and ran away from foster care, joining her friend at Mallillin’s house. She was told she was “safe” and that the girls would have to “do stuff to stay there,” according to court documents.
The second girl told investigators that after she arrived from foster care, the two girls had sex while Mallillin watched and attempted to participate. After three days Mallillin told them they had to leave, according to documents.
The allegations came to light on Feb. 24, 2019, after the second girl’s mother called police, saying her daughter and her friend had run away from foster care and had stayed at an adult man’s house. Mallillin was charged March 12, 2019, in Kitsap County Superior Court.
Two separate reports were conducted in the lead-up to Mallillin’s sentencing, and both mention Mallillin’s short tenure as a corrections officer — one report was conducted by the Department of Corrections, the other by the psychologist. Both provide some of the same basic facts but with some variations.
In the report completed by DOC, an interviewer wrote that Mallillin “walked off the job” as a corrections officer after being accused of attempting to smuggle contraband into a female inmate. The DOC interviewer wrote that Mallillin had graduated from the Correctional Worker Core Academy.
In Mallillin’s account written by the psychologist, he claimed he was “dismissed.” In that account, Mallillin claimed he was the one who reported another prison staff member for bringing jewelry into the prison for an inmate. But the inmate identified Mallillin as the person who brought it to her.
“I enjoyed the work, I felt that I maintained good personal boundaries with the inmates,” Mallillin said, according to the psychologist’s report.
For state law enforcement officers, much of their history with an agency is a matter of public record and can be obtained through the state Public Records Act.
On Aug. 23, the Kitsap Sun requested documents regarding Mallillin’s tenure with the DOC in an attempt to clarify his departure.
The department responded that it would “update” the newspaper on the status of the request within 50 business days, or by Nov. 7.
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