A sex offender will serve the last four years of a 1997 sentence for sexual intercourse without consent in Montana State Prison after he was kicked out of a sex offender treatment program.

Melvin Warren Williams, 36, was sent to prison by Flathead District Judge Amy Eddy on Thursday.

After he had contact with a woman who is developmentally delayed, Williams was removed from a sex offender treatment program that is required as part of his probation. Probation officer Brock O’Hara said Williams and the woman were found tickling each other outside ImagineIF Library in Kalispell by Kalispell Police earlier this year.

Williams later admitted having sporadic telephone contact with the woman.

Williams had taken the woman in 2013 to a hotel, where he swam with her and kissed her. At that time Williams was warned by his sex offender treatment provider that if he saw or contacted the woman again, he would be kicked out of his treatment group.

In 2013 the suspended sentence for Williams was re-suspended and the judge handling the case warned that there would be no second chances if he contacted the woman again.

“There are notes in the record that there would be zero tolerance,” Eddy said.

Public defender Jessica Polan said that sending Williams to prison seemed too harsh. She provided an affidavit by the woman that stated there was no sexual contact.

“It’s what I would describe as a friendship,” Polan testified.

Eddy remarked that the affidavit did not carry full weight because a sex treatment evaluator believed the woman was too developmentally delayed to consent to sex.

Polan pointed out that the woman involved has a 2-year-old child and that no one was charged with rape after the child was conceived.

“Four years in prison would be incredibly excessive for something like this,” Polan said. “This case kind of baffles me in its severity.”

When it was noted that Williams cannot return to his previous therapy group or the only other treatment group in the valley because of nonpayment of fees, Polan pointed out that Williams had completed both phases of sex offender treatment in prison. Sex offenders are the only offenders routinely ordered to seek treatment throughout the entirety of a sentence, Polan said.

“The ongoing cost can be absolutely overwhelming with people in these kinds of situations,” Polan said.

Williams originally was sentenced to 20 years in Montana State Prison with 15 years suspended. According to his court record, the evaluator performing the original 1997 sex offender evaluation found that, “Untreated and released (now or 10 years from now) he would almost certainly reoffend, probably another young child.”

Reporter Megan Strickland can be reached at 758-4459 or mstrickland@dailyinterlake.com.