Articles Posted in Sex Crimes

The Pasadena Star News is reporting that Los Angeles County Sheriff’s detectives who were staking out a robbery suspect on Thursday stopped an alleged rape in progress and captured the suspect. Kenneth Parker of San Gabriel was booked on suspicion of kidnapping to commit rape, attempted rape, burglary and assault with a deadly weapon.

Detectives from the Major Crimes Bureau were conducting surveillance looking for a serial robbery suspect when they saw Parker grab and attempt to rape a woman, a Sheriff’s statement said. The woman escaped before the detectives could intervene, but Parker then grabbed second woman moments later and dragged her into a business in on East Valley Boulevard, took the woman into a rear bathroom of the business and locked the door. Detectives rescued the woman and were able to take Parker into custody.

Parker is being held in lieu of $1 million bail and is due for arraignment at Alhambra Superior Court Monday.

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According to the New York Times, one in five teens may be a child pornographer risking life in prison — for the crime of taking and distributing naked pictures of themselves.

According to a recent study commissioned by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com, 20 percent of teenagers have taken nude or semi-nude pictures or videos of themselves and sent them to someone or posted them online. Most send these gifts to their boyfriend or girlfriend (69 percent) or someone they want to date or hook up with (30 percent).

These statistics are alarming, but so is the fact that ‘sexting” is now a crime. So what may seem on the surface to be puppy love in the information age now could put kids in jeopardy for prison time- as child pornographers no less.

It’s illegal under federal and state child-porn laws to create explicit images of a minor and to posses them or distribute them. These laws were drafted to address adult abuse of minors, but it turns out they don’t exempt minors who create and distribute images, even if the pictures are of them. In fact, prosecutors in several states are going after creator-victims, in both federal and state court. Some kids are being charged as juveniles but under Federal law, there is no such equivalent.

So when a 16-year-old with takes pictures of herself and sends them to a boy to seduce him, she could get life in federal prison under current sentencing guidelines. If she does manage to get out, she may have to register as a sex offender.

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A few months ago, I posted on the backlog of DNA testing by the L.A. County Sherriff’s office- and how these backlogs are causing investigations to be dropped by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office because the statute of limitation has run. This week, the Los Angeles Times reports that initial tallies of cases that are affected by the backlog were underestimated. To date, there are 815 sexual assault cases with untested DNA and the statute of limitations has expired on 51 of these cases.

One Sheriff’s County supervisor said that currently 4,738 of the sexual assault kits in county storage facilities remain untested – and about 20% of them are from other police agencies in the county that rely on the sheriff’s crime laboratory for DNA testing. And apparently over 100 of these cases are within six months of the ten year statute of limitations that prosecutors have to file a felony.

These are troubling statistics. On one hand, this evidence may contain the “smoking gun” to put a sexual predator behind bars and keep our communities safe. On the other hand, who knows what sort of exonerating evidence is contained in those nearly 4,800 kits. Either way, it is contrary to how law enforcement should be handling investigations and someone needs to find the resources to get through this backlog quickly and efficiently.

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A Pasadena woman was raped this week and Los Angeles Police are still looking for her attacker. The Daily News reports that the victim was picked up by a motorist in a Ford F150 from a bus stop on Colorado Boulevard early Friday morning. After getting into the truck, the suspect drove the woman to an isolated location where he beat and sexually assaulted her.
According to police, after the rape, the attacker bound the victim’s hands and dropped her off at a secluded spot near La Tuna Canyon Road. The suspect was described as a 40ish, 5-foot, 10-inch white male — possibly of Hispanic descent – weighing 285 pounds, with brown hair, blue eyes and wearing a Dodgers’ baseball hat. Police asked anyone with any information regarding the attack to call the Pasadena Police Department at (626) 744-4522.
There are few crimes more repulsive to the public than sex offenses- which is why a person charged with these crimes cannot afford to do anything but fight hard to get the best possible result. Fighting hard means challenging every part of the case, from identification, to scientific evidence to prior acts and witness statements. Do not attempt to handle this matter by yourself. If you have been charged with a sex crime, Orange County Sexual Assault Attorney William Weinberg can help you fight your charges. Please call (714) 834-1400 to discuss your case.

The L.A. Daily News is reporting that a Thousand Oaks man who targeted immigrant women and children plead guilty yesterday to crimes against four women. The Ventura County District Attorneys Office says that 79-year-old man entered pleas to five charges sexual battery to lewd acts with a child.

Allegedly, the man posted ads in local stores seeking house cleaning services or health care for his ailing wife and then would demand sex from the women and threaten them with death or deportation if they didn’t submit to him. A 27-year-old woman testified the man began fondling her when she was 9.

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Richard Winton of The Los Angles Times reports today that nearly 200 potential sexual assault cases have gone without prosecution because Los Angeles Police officials failed to test them within the 10-year statute of limitations period required to identify and charge a suspect in a sexual crime. These claims come on top of last week’s allegations that the LAPD’s fingerprint experts have been inconsistent in their work– to the point where innocent people were falsely implicated in crimes.

According to law enforcement officials, each kit contains a potential genetic road map to the perpetrator of a crime. In Los Angeles County, the backlog has occasionally caused trial dates to be canceled. And in one case, an evidence kit that went untested for months left a suspected rapist free to allegedly assault another victim.

A City Controller audit showed that the LAPD has a backlog of 7,000 sexual assault test kits that have not been examined. Of those cases, 217 are beyond the 10-year statute in which to prosecute the crimes. As an excuse, Police say that they don’t have enough funding to run these labs efficiently and that more forensic techs were authorized–but budgeting for their salaries weren’t.

Victim advocates think that it is unconscionable to make rape victims go through the trauma of the examination for the rape kit and then wait years for police to investigate and prosecute their cases because their kits aren’t tested. Our office thinks that if there is DNA evidence that can exonerate or implicate a person, it should be tested before pleas are entered or charges filed. The criminal justice system is supposed to seek the truth- the current backlog of processing such probative evidence flies in the face of those notions.

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