Featured OR News Stories:
Quick to label and slow to lock away
Steve Duin
12 Oct 2006 12:00 am
Predatory. That's always the word I stumble over. There's nothing to like in "predatory sex offender," but "predatory" is pure venom. The adjective is active, not dormant. A promise, not a threat, as Jessica Taylor discovered early Saturday morning.
The Oregon State junior was walking to her part-time job at a Corvallis women's treatment center when, without warning, she was introduced to Brian Downer, a beefy 42-year-old Corvallis native whose portrait is prominently featured on Benton County's Sex Offender Registry.
Downer has earned his "predatory" tag over the years. Arizona placed him on probation for life in the early '90s after two cases of attempted sexual assault. He offended again in Oregon in 1998 when he went trolling on the Internet and hooked a 16-year-old.
There's no mystery about this guy; neither, unfortunately, is there the proper leash. Click on his mug on the Benton County Web site and you're told he's not allowed access to minors, pornography, alcohol, the Internet or the neighborhood swimming pool.
His favorite move? "Generally targets college-aged females, who are sunbathing and/or lounging near apartment complex swimming pools and young females he meets through dating services via the Internet."
Yet except for the surprise visits from his parole officer and the occasional polygraph, this predator is allowed free rein in Corvallis, which sports an unusually high concentration of college-aged females.
Man indicted for murder, burning of Salem woman
DAN DE CARBONEL and JUSTIN MUCH
28 Sep 2006 12:00 am
The man arrested in the death and mutilation of June Inez “Candy” Kell was described Wednesday afternoon as a predator who was known to prey on some of the women who hung out in the downtown transit mall area.
Philip Michael Florek, 26, a convicted sex offender, is being held without bail at a county jail in Massachusetts in connection with Kell’s death, said Marion County deputy district attorney Jodie Bureta.
The body of the 20-year-old Salem woman was found burning beneath a local bridge Aug. 29. A medical examiner determined that she died of blunt-force trauma.
Florek was indicted by a Marion County grand jury for Kell’s murder Tuesday and is being held without bail at the Hampden County jail in Ludlow, Mass.
He will be arraigned on charges of murder, abuse of a corpse and failure to register as a sex offender once he returns to Marion County within two weeks Bureta said. Florek has waived extradition.
Asian bust nets Oregon fugitive
BRYAN DENSON
21 Sep 2006 12:00 am
A fugitive sex offender from Oregon, accused of filming himself sexually abusing two children above a Cambodian barroom, will be expelled from that Southeast Asian nation and flown to Portland, accompanied by federal marshals.
The expulsion of 54-year-old Terry D. Smith follows his arrest Wednesday outside the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh, according to Deputy John R. Shoemaker, who supervises criminal investigations for the U.S. Marshals Service in Portland.
Smith will be flown back to Oregon in handcuffs to face charges filed six years ago in Jackson County of sodomy, sexual abuse and using a child in a display of sexually explicit conduct, Shoemaker said.
"He won't be coming back business class sipping champagne," he added.
Police accused Smith in July of having sex with two girls, 13 and 14, and filming the assaults in a bedroom above Tramp's Palace, the bar he owned in Sihanoukville, according to Pamela Livingston, a spokeswoman for the International Justice Mission, a global human rights group.
"He was brutalizing them for his own pleasure and to prepare them to be sold to others," said Livingston, whose organization sent investigators to the bar. The IJM, as it is known, is a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that seeks prosecutions of people who smuggle, sexually exploit or otherwise abuse other humans.
The IJM had sent undercover investigators into Smith's bar, where they shot video of the girls -- some of them appeared to be pre-teens -- dancing topless and being offered for sexual massage and oral sex, Livingston said.
The crimes Smith is accused of committing in Cambodia had a familiar ring to Oregon authorities.
Fifteen years ago in Josephine County, Smith was convicted of multiple charges that he used children in displays of sexual acts. He served 15 months in prison, records show. When he got out, authorities said, he failed to register as a sex offender and eventually fled to the Philippines.
Mom: 9-1-1 call was to help son
MAXINE BERNSTEIN
18 Sep 2006 12:00 am
Hope Glenn was frustrated because she, her husband and her son's friends couldn't seem to calm her drunken, agitated 18-year-old son early Saturday. So she called 9-1-1 at 3:05 a.m. for help.
She told a dispatcher her teenage son, Lukus, was suicidal, standing outside their house in the Garden Home area of unincorporated Washington County with a knife to his throat.
"When I called 9-1-1, I called to save my son, to get some professional help," she said in an interview Sunday. "Maybe I'm naive."
Minutes after Washington County sheriff's deputies and a Tigard police officer arrived and Glenn's son, Lukus, refused to drop his knife, officers fired bean-bag rounds at him. When Glenn turned toward the house, two deputies fired several gunshots. Relatives said the teenager collapsed by a doorstep. He died at the scene.
The sheriff's office did not say how many times or where Glenn was shot, but said the deputies fired because they were concerned he might harm family inside.
The teenager's parents and relatives Sunday said in interviews the deputies' gunfire ripped through the house and into the teenager's 72-year-old grandmother's room, barely missing her.
"I could have lost my son and my mom," Hope Glenn said. She pointed out two bullet holes in the front door and two inside the grandmother's room as she numbly recounted Saturday's events.
When Hope Glenn saw her son put a knife to his throat and refuse to move it, she called 9-1-1. "I said, 'Don't shoot him, he's suicidal.' "
Hope Glenn watched from her windows and said she pleaded on the phone with an emergency dispatcher, "Don't let them shoot him. He's my only son."
The Glenns watched their son fall on the front step outside his grandmother's room. Hope Glenn was screaming and had to be treated later for chest pains.
Sunday afternoon, wearing a Tigard football sweatshirt, Hope Glenn said, "I wish I just wouldn't have called."
Sheriff should have fired deputy in 'tattoo' case
15 Sep 2006 12:00 am
Multnomah County Sheriff Bernie Giusto has made some astonishing errors of judgment in his discipline of a deputy who in 2004 coerced women into lifting their shirts, removing their bras or unzipping their pants so he could search for a bogus "flower tattoo."
Giusto should have fired the officer. Instead, the sheriff sent him back out on patrol. He'd still be there today if it weren't for a Sept. 8 story by The Oregonian's Maxine Bernstein, calling attention to the matter. As heat from the news coverage mounted, Giusto reassigned the deputy, Chris Green, from street patrol to the training unit -- another stumble.
"Simply stated, Deputy Green asked several young, attractive women to engage in some very demeaning conduct," prosecutors wrote in a 2005 memo to District Attorney Michael Schrunk. "It is clear it had nothing to do with his police function."
According to investigators, Green pulled over three women one day in November 2004 and asked to see their tattoos, claiming he was searching for a female suspect with a flower tattoo. However, no such suspect with tattoos was being sought, the inquiry determined.
That alone should be been grounds for dismissal. However, according to a district attorney's office memo, Green later lied to his supervisor when asked about the matter, and that should have been further grounds.
"If average citizen Joe Smith did what this deputy did, he'd be in jail," says one angry police commander in the Portland area.
Police say suspect returned to apologize to rape victim
Associated Press
06 Sep 2006 12:00 am
Police have arrested a Hillsboro man who returned to an 87-year-old woman's house to apologize for raping her.
The rape was reported to police on March 31. The night before, a young man knocked on the woman's door and asked to use the telephone.
When the woman refused to let him enter, he forced his way into the home and raped her.
Sex-offender counselor will discuss issues in TV series
ALAN GUSTAFSON
04 Sep 2006 12:00 am
Marilyn Callahan is taking her sex-offender expertise to television.
The Salem counselor is preparing an eight-part Capital Community Television series about sex offenders that will delve into issues such as types of sex criminals, treatment and parole supervision. It is slated to be broadcast in the fall and winter, starting in October.
Q: Some people say sex offenders should be locked up forever. What's your response?
A: I don't believe we have room to lock up people forever. Our laws aren't structured that way. Legally, we just don't do that.
Q: Do you think society is making progress in terms of dealing with sex offenders in a way that promotes public safety?
A: I think it's going backward. I don't see progress here. We're driving them underground with what we're doing now. We're back to the Scarlet Letter days. We're labeling these people. They can't start over.
Q: Some people might think you're just a bleeding-heart do-gooder. What would you say to them?
A: Please; I'm not a do-gooder. You can think whatever you want about me, but I'm looking at safety for the community. These people are going to be out here, so we might as well do the best job we can to rehabilitate them.
Q: Today, there is no sex-offender treatment in the Oregon prison system. As a therapist, how do you start the process of rehabilitating a person returning to the community after years behind bars?
A: I start by working on truth and empathy. If you don't have truth and empathy, you can't get anywhere.
Q: What other factors are keys to sex-offender rehabilitation?
A: Hope, to me, is a catalyst for the recovery process. They need case management. They need housing and jobs. If they don't have these things, there's no hope.
Bogus kidnap, attempted rape report leads to charge
Lee van der Voo
30 Aug 2006 6:25 pm
Lake Oswego Police announced Friday that a local woman was cited for filing a false police report in connection with her report of kidnapping and attempted rape earlier last week.
Elizabeth Ann Brown, 22, Lake Oswego, was cited for filing the bogus report, Lake Oswego Police Capt. Mike Hammons said.
“The investigation into this matter revealed that Ms. Brown allegedly filed a report of kidnapping and attempted rape because her boyfriend had forgotten their anniversary,” Hammons said. “She left the house after an argument and made her claim upon returning.”
“The real issue is the trauma she put the entire neighborhood through,” Hammons said. “To frighten people to that degree – that should be criminal.”
Predatory sex offenders live near schools
TRACY LOEW
28 Aug 2006 12:00 am
Toby Bryant Stephenson made headlines a decade ago, when he turned himself in to Tucson, Ariz., police saying he was experiencing urges to molest children.
Stephenson told police he had molested numerous children in Oregon, where there was a warrant for his arrest for violating his parole.
He already had served three years for kidnapping and molesting an 11-year-old girl.
Arizona authorities sent Stephenson back to Salem. He now makes his home about 400 yards from Bush Elementary School.
Smelly, Dirty Man Sought In Alleged Attempted Rape
23 Aug 2006 12:00 am
Lake Oswego police are looking for a man who allegedly tried to kidnap and rape a woman Tuesday night.
The woman told police she was walking on Washington Court just off Boones Ferry Road around 9 p.m. when she was
grabbed from behind by a man and dragged into the a wooded area.
The suspect is described as a white male in his late 40s, 5'5" and 160-170 lbs with collar length straight brown
hair, a receding hairline and balding on top. He has a full scraggly beard and very bad body odor and green teeth.
He was wearing an olive drab military field jacket, dark pants, white tennis shoes and was carrying a full red
backpack.
The victim said the suspect and his clothes and backpack were all very dirty.
Anyone with information on the attack is asked to call (503) 635-0238.
Suspect in 7-year-old's rape had visited home
LARRY BINGHAM
11 Aug 2006 12:00 am
Kidnap case - Sex predator Hugh Hile was registered with police after dropping "off the radar" for six years
A convicted sexual predator charged with kidnapping and raping a 7-year-old Albany girl visited the apartment where the girl lives at least once the week before the alleged abduction, police said.
Hugh Hile was arraigned on one count of unlawful contact with a child, one count of kidnapping, two counts of rape, four counts of sodomy and four counts of unlawful sexual penetration.
He has a long criminal history. He was convicted of three felonies that brought jail time: possession of a controlled substance, and breaking into a Lane County home and attempting to rape a 21-year-old pregnant woman.
Abandoned boy's dad also charged with rape
KRISTINA BRENNEMAN
04 Aug 2006 5:15 pm
The father of a baby boy abandoned at a Gresham motel was charged Friday with child abandonment and the rape of a 16-year-old girl in an unrelated incident.
The teen was allegedly raped Thursday morning at the Super 8 Motel at 121 N.E. 181st Ave., Gresham, said Grant McCormick, a spokesman for Gresham Police. The 16-year-old girl reported the incident to police later that afternoon, he said.
While at the Super 8 motel, he apparently gave his son to someone to babysit.
McCormick said the babysitter disappeared and the baby was found late Thursday night by two teenage sisters.
Oregon's "Safe Haven" law allows parents (guardians) to anonymously leave a child at an authorized facility, but only applies to infants 30 days of age or younger, McCormick said.
Ore. teacher arrested on child porn charge
ANTONIA GIEDWOYN
04 Aug 2006 5:04 pm
A high school teacher at the private school run by the Grand View Baptist Church in Beavercreek was arrested on a child pornography charge, the FBI said.
An undercover FBI agent linked [the teacher] to several photographs depicting child pornography. Authorities later found child porn on [the teacher's] home and work computers.
Former police officer sentenced for porn, sex charges
Associated Press
28 Jul 2006 7:16 am
A former King City police officer will serve four years in federal prison after pleading guilty to child pornography and sex charges.
Thirty-year-old Brandon Tomkins resigned from the police force last August as the city was beginning an administrative review.
Prosecutors say Tomkins gained the trust of a 15-year-old Aloha boy he met on the Internet. After months of exchanging e-mails and talking on the phone, Tomkins met the boy, who had turned 16, to have sex.
The boy is a special education student with a learning disability and told a school counselor the next day.
Tomkins must also serve five years on probation and register as a sex offender for life.
