In anxious conversations all over Almaden Valley, neighbors are talking about Mike Silva: Did you hear that the man who wants to open a coffee stand inside our new library used to be on the Megan’s Law database?
The revelation set off months of outcry, soul searching and pain. It led to the coffee contract being canceled, reinstated and canceled again. And it culminates tonight when Silva holds an extraordinary meeting at the Almaden branch library, inviting neighbors to ask anything about how he landed on – and got off – the public sex offender list.
Silva maintains his innocence. A police investigator still believes he is guilty.
“This emotionally paralyzes people, this subject,” said Silva, 58, who pleaded no contest to lewd acts with a minor, “because no one knows what to do with it.”
It was last fall when a library patron recognized him from the list. Parents began calling city officials, the police and library director Jane Light, who initially canceled Silva’s contract and then reconsidered after he pleaded with her to hear his story.
Clash of values
The coffee stand never opened. And the situation left Light enduring countless sleepless nights: How could she be fair to Silva yet respectful of the parents? She urged parents to talk to Silva – a library regular who lives across the street. None did.
“The whole thing illustrated to me a lot of ethical dilemmas, and how difficult it is to get people to talk,” said Light. “As a librarian, we have a really strong principle of having all points of views. Let everyone read and question and think – then come to their own conclusion.”
Silva’s meeting at the Camden Avenue library will be open to all comers, all questions.
“What I ask rational people to do is, for 30 seconds, walk my life,” he said. “Stand for a moment in my shoes.”
During a messy custody battle in the 1980s, he said, his ex-wife accused him of molesting their two daughters. At the 1989 preliminary hearing, Silva sat in an Alameda County court as his 9-year-old daughter testified about daddy’s “wong-wong.”
“It became clear to me that the only way to be found innocent is I – through my attorney – would have to shoot holes through my daughter,” said Silva, who has thinning gray hair and a crucifix dangling from a gold chain. That hearing prompted flashbacks to his own parents’ divorce – how awful it was when his father used him to spy on his mother.
To spare his daughter a brutal cross-examination, Silva said he agreed to a plea bargain: five years’ probation and no parental contact. The Mercury News could not independently review Silva’s criminal file, which is in Alameda County storage.
There was no Megan’s Law in 1989, but in the shadow of the notorious McMartin preschool child abuse case he doubted he would be found not guilty.
“The choices at that time: Me, Mike Silva, fall on that sword,” he said. “Or go back and roll the dice.”
San Leandro police Capt. Ian Willis – who investigated the case – remembers it differently. He concluded that Silva had molested both of his young daughters over an extended period.
The district attorney offered the plea deal after the older daughter “got scared, froze up and didn’t want to say thing anything with her father in the room.”
“The DA was afraid if the younger daughter did the same,” recalled Willis, Silva “would walk away, basically scot-free.”
After probation
Silva says his daughter’s story was shaky because it was coached and wasn’t true. After probation ended, Silva said his record was expunged and the charge reduced – which qualified him to be excluded from the Megan’s Law database. He also agreed to not see his daughters for an additional three years in an arrangement that also ended his child support payments. He reasoned it would be hard to rekindle his parental relationship while his daughters lived with their mother.
His ex-wife declined to comment for this article.
Today – 18 years later – Silva still hasn’t seen his daughters – though he plans a reconciliation. He hired a private investigator to learn about them.
He has the yearbook from his younger daughter’s high school. When his older daughter graduated, he sat in the park across the street photographing all the female students because he doesn’t know what she looks like now.
After hearing his story, Light agreed to reconsider the coffee contract if he got off the Megan’s Law database. After $7,000 in legal fees, his name is gone from the Web site.
Getting off the list lifted his credibility in Light’s eyes. Police assured her his criminal record just listed a misdemeanor. Still, Silva must annually register with police as a sex offender.
Light agreed to reinstate the contract. As an extra step, she held a meeting with library and community center employees to talk with Silva.
The library coffee stand – Cool Beans Coffee – sits, empty, near the children’s activity center.
“If we’re going to err at all, we should err on the side of caution,” said one concerned parent who asked his name not be used. He hasn’t talked to Silva and won’t attend tonight’s meeting. Why , he said, just listen to Silva’s side?
“It sounds like his perspective is: He’s innocent and he was trying to protect his children,” said the man who has three young children. “You hear the same story from everyone who’s been convicted.”
It wasn’t so clear-cut to Light, who kept thinking about her late mother, a school teacher faced with parents angry that their white daughters might have to touch a black student during school square dance lessons. She taught the hokey-pokey instead, sparing the black child from humiliation.
Quest for fairness
Her mother’s choices taught Light a lot about character and values that inform ethical dilemmas. Light kept parsing Silva’s situation with her own children.
“I wanted to share with them my thinking and my pain about it,” she said. “This felt really important to me.”
What is fair, she kept asking. Will people share their concerns with Silva? And, for nearly 20-year-old allegations, can there be redemption?
Last month, she canceled Silva’s contract. She couldn’t have parents avoiding the library because they were avoiding him. The city will re-bid the coffee stand; Silva can re-apply, though his chances are slim.
It all frustrates Silva, who veers between tears and indignation as he tells his story. His current wife is distraught – she knew about his past, but never fathomed that it would explode so publicly.
He says she can’t understand why he’s holding this meeting. Can’t they just wait and hope everything blows over? He says no.
“I have two choices: I can roll over and go away and take my financial and emotional lumps,” Silva said. “Or I can do more.”
Contact Kim Vo at kvo@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5719.
