`WHY DIDN'T WE THROW AWAY THE KEY?'

WITH his capture, we exhaled. Then, in seemingly scripted fashion, we
pointed fingers.

How had we not seen the monster among us?

Curtis Dean Anderson -- who police say kidnapped and sexually assaulted an
8-year-old girl -- has led a sickening life punctuated by run-ins with the
law. At the age when other teens were off to college, Anderson was bouncing
in and out of state prison.

His exploits were stunningly brutal. And he harbored a special contempt for
women and children.

There was the time in 1991 when Anderson was charged with kidnapping an
acquaintance, binding her wrists and driving her to Oregon before she
escaped. He was convicted of a lesser charge of false imprisonment and
theft of a stolen car and sentenced to six years and eight months, but
released early.

A Vallejo woman, seeking a restraining order against Anderson, said he
kidnapped her three times and threatened to kill her. She alleged that he
raped her at knifepoint in a 1985 incident. The order was granted.

In 1984 Anderson's wife said he kept her and their 2-year-old son in their
apartment for two days. Anderson, who had gonorrhea at the time, sexually
assaulted his wife in front of their child. She filed for divorce five days
later.

Today, he's accused of kidnapping and sexually assaulting 8-year-old Midsi
Sanchez. She escaped. Now Anderson, 39, is back in a familiar spot -- jail.

"They had him," Midsi's mother, Susanna Velasco, said. "Why didn't they
throw away the key?"

Why, indeed.

The answer is about as complicated as Anderson, a child of a dysfunctional
home who started swilling a half-gallon of vodka or gin a day starting at
age 15.

He was dealt a lousy hand; his alcoholic dad abused his mother and him.
Rather than nurturing, he got knocked around. He responded with evil.

As Anderson mutated, we failed to get involved.

"Prevention is by far the best approach. Next is early detection," says
Norm Dishotsky, clinical professor of psychiatry at Stanford Medical
Center. "But deeper than talking about it is actually getting real and
seeing it. No denial."

There were the early warning signals: Anderson's escalating aggressive
behavior. Lack of empathy. Poor judgment. Cruelty. He dropped out of school
in the ninth grade and racked up a juvenile record with more than 60
criminal counts.

Still, nothing effective was done to change Anderson's course.

Reaching and treating troubled youth greatly boosts their chances of
evolving into productive, healthy adults. They show higher rates of school
graduation, college attendance, employment and community involvement. Even
with counseling and substance abuse treatment, there are no guarantees.
Without it, however, troubled youths are almost certainly doomed.

They become scary. They frighten us. And that fear distracts us from a
rational response.

"This terror that we feel, our vulnerability to this malignant other fellow
who terrorizes us, our family, our community . . . once you feel that, it's
safe to say rational, thoughtful, progressive ways of dealing with this guy
and who he is are impossible," Dishotsky adds.

Almost as fast as the cell door slammed behind Anderson, we scratched our
collective heads and condemned the cops, the courts and all else within
pointing distance.

The irony here is that the system did work -- at least when Anderson came
to the attention of authorities in Santa Clara County.

In 1997, Anderson was accused of molesting two children. The children were
interviewed. One said nothing happened; the other described something that
didn't rise to the level of a criminal act. No charges were filed.

"The case went properly through the system," says Assistant District
Attorney Karyn Sinunu. "Unless we want to change it so that we put people
in prison on suspicion, we're going to have to be satisfied with this --
and it's not satisfying."

Sinunu says she can relate to the public outrage over a case like
Anderson's. But emotion cannot trump the legal standard -- those important
details pushed to the periphery by gut reaction.

"The public is outraged because they think we had a case we could prove
beyond a reasonable doubt," she explains. "But that's not what happened."

We want our horror stories cut and dried. Even more, they'd better be
wrapped up before bedtime. Failure to do so stirs us to find fault. That
makes us feel better.

But the bottom line is that none of us can understand Curtis Anderson, and
that's why we're looking somewhere else.

Anderson represents an opportunity missed. In neglecting to scoop him up
after his early brushes with the law and offer special attention, treatment
and rehabilitation, the system never gave Anderson the chance to make
better choices.

Roqua Montez IV is a Mercury News editorial writer.