PORT ANGELES — A registered sex offender and carnival worker from Port Angeles was arrested Thursday for being around children at the Clallam and Pacific County fairs.
Phillip C. Shelly, 51, worked at the Clallam County Fair from Aug. 16-19 as an employee of Hayworth Family Shows despite his orders to have no contact with minors, state Department of Corrections officials said.
Corrections officers were tipped that Shelly worked at the fair and was headed to another fair in southwest Washington.
“He worked up there, and he did a good job,” DOC spokeswoman Selena Davis said.
“He was going to travel to the next county.”
Pacific County sheriff’s deputies arrested Shelly, a Level II sex offender, at the fair in South Bend.
He is being held without bail on DOC community custody violation at the Pacific County jail.
Shelly pleaded guilty in 1998 to first-degree rape of a 3-year-old girl. He served 11 years in prison.
Shortly after his release, Shelly was convicted of escaping from community custody by letting the battery of his global positioning system device go dead before cutting it off, Corrections Officer Gerald Brown said.
Shelly, who is listed in court papers as a transient, also was charged in Clallam County Superior Court for failing to register as a sex offender in March 2011 and April of this year.
He was under specific orders to stay away from “places that minors tend to congregate, which, of course, is a fair,” Brown said.
Shelly “drastically changed his appearance” by shaving off his beard and trimming his mustache, Brown said.
He added that Shelly likely will have a Department of Corrections hearing on his new violations this week.
The Hayworth Family Shows doesn’t do background checks on workers because the checks are too expensive, according to Seattle’s Q13 Fox News. Private companies aren’t required to do such checks.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
