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Internet child predator spared prison
Kim Vallez
12 Sep 2006 6:00 pm
Internet child predator Matthew Ward cut a deal with prosecutors which could have locked him up for 18 months.
Instead his sentencing hearing Monday ended in probation coupled with intense counseling and registration as a sex offender.
It was back in January when Ward went to Mary Fox Park in northwest Albuquerque expecting to meet a 14-year-old girl for sex. He was unaware the girl he met online was actually an agent with the Attorney General's Office.
The agents said finding Ward wasn't too tough. Minutes after they posed as the teen girl, they said Ward exposed himself using his webcam and asked to meet for sex.
Ward pleaded guilty in July to child solicitation by computer and no contest to attempted criminal sexual penetration.
As part of that deal, Ward, 41, agreed to register as a sex offender and faced 18 months prison time.
Attorney General Patricia Madrid told KRQE News 13 she wanted Ward to go to prison, but District Judge Pat Murdoch said her prosecutors didn’t ask for that when the came to court on Monday.
“We would like to have incarceration,” Madrid said. The request for prison time was in the presentence report prepared after the guilty plea and sent to the court, she added.
But there was no mention of prison time in court during the sentencing hearing, Murdoch said in an interview.
“From what was presented in court, I was under the impression that everyone wanted counseling,” Murdoch said. “It would have been a different situation, and there would have been a different sentence imposed, had this been a real child."
Female veterans often struggle with trauma long after returning from war
JACKIE JADRNAK
06 Sep 2006 12:00 am
Most soldiers look forward to coming home from war. But few of them realize how much of the war they might bring home with them.
Some find they lost their sense of safety somewhere in a barracks, an Army truck, the sands of the Middle East. Even a return to relative peace doesn't ease the tension, the jumpiness, the need to keep looking over their shoulders.
And, for two women being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder at the Albuquerque VA's Women's Trauma Clinic, it wasn't always clear where they would find the "enemy."
A 43-year-old military nurse (let's call her Sarah) was on so-called "safe ground" when she encountered her first trauma. On active duty in Washington, D.C., in 1988, she met a man while both were receiving physical therapy.
"He became kind of obsessed with me," she said. "He tried to propose to me. I refused him, and he assaulted me. He beat me up pretty badly."
She sought help afterward, but was able to attend only three sessions at a rape crisis center before she was mobilized for Desert Storm in 1991. As she treated casualties of war, she encountered many female troopers who were victims of rape, she said.
"So many things happened," Sarah continued. "Three or four women were gang-raped; one was assaulted by a superior officer. One young lady was pregnant from an assault.
"We had to carry weapons to the showers to protect ourselves from our own men," Sarah said.
This kind of story isn't unusual, according to Diane Castillo, a psychologist and founder of the PTSD treatment program and the Women's Trauma Clinic at the New Mexico VA Health Care System.
About 90 women have come into the program "and we're just starting," Castillo said. Of the women under treatment for PTSD, 80 percent come as a result of sexual trauma, she said.
DA defends decision to drop burglary charges
Jason Auslander
13 Aug 2006 12:00 am
To his alleged latest victim, the fact that a man with a more than 20-year history of sexual violence could be let out of jail seems "preposterous.''
But Santa Fe District Attorney Henry Valdez said he had no choice but to dismiss a charge of aggravated burglary against Mark Catanach, who allegedly walked into a next-door neighbor's house in the middle of the night in July and assaulted one of two women living there.
And Valdez took issue Saturday with a story about Catanach, 43, in that day's New Mexican that characterized Catanach's alleged actions toward two female neighbors as a break-in. Valdez said Catanach allegedly entered the women's home through an unlocked door and, therefore, broke nothing to get in.
Moreover, he said, in order to prove a felony charge against Catanach like aggravated burglary -- the charge against him that was dismissed Thursday -- prosecutors must determine he entered the home to commit a theft or another felony.
``It doesn't matter what I think. It's what we can prove,'' he said.
Deputies hunt sex offender
18 Jul 2006 3:01 pm
A child-sex predator is the target of a Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department search.
Larry Neely vanished after allegedly failing to report to the department after a job change. That's a felony under New Mexico law.
A warrant from Arkansas is out this morning for Neely, a registered sex offender who phoned boys in there from his Albuquerque home to solicit sex.
Neely registered in New Mexico as a sex offender last August after a flap where he claimed he didn't have to register in this state because what he did legally is not a crime here.
Ex-APD officer gets 15 years in prison
Joline Gutierrez Krueger
30 Mar 2006 3:45 pm
Former Albuquerque police Officer Christopher Chase will spend the next 15 years in prison after being sentenced today for the sexual assaults or beatings he dealt out to seven motorists from 2001 to 2003.
Prosecutors say Chase randomly selected vehicles to pull over, then forced himself on the motorist, most of whom had not committed any traffic offense. The incidents occurred while Chase was both on- and off-duty, and while he was using his marked police car.
The victims include three women and three teenage girls. The charges also involve a teenage male relative of a high-ranking law enforcement official whom Chase is accused of beating with a flashlight and assaulting with a gun during a traffic stop in September 2002.
Tears flowed freely during the emotional sentencing hearing. Several victims spoke, saying they no longer trusted authorities, including police, and that the assaults had changed their lives forever.
Police: Man Hides In Bathrooms, Drinks Boys' Urine
Police said Patton told them it makes him sick, but that it's almost spiritual to him. He allegedly added, "I like it because it makes me closer to them -- like I'm drinking their youth."
Officials said Patton is a registered sexual predator, who was convicted of rape 13 years ago.
Police believe Patton has been collecting and drinking urine in cities around Central Ohio, including Hilliard, Westerville, Dublin, Worthington and Gahanna.
Police said the 11-year-old girl was sexually assaulted and then asphyxiated
Eleven-year-old Victoria Sandoval most likely knew the man who crept over her windowsill Monday night, then sexually assaulted and strangled or smothered her in her bedroom, police say.
The park has one registered sex offender, a man who was convicted of crimes against a child. Trujillo said she thinks the man has moved out of the park, despite it being his registered address.
McCabe said it is standard procedure for detectives to inquire about sex offenders near a crime scene.
