Featured WY News Stories:
Mom keeps sex-violence issue at fore
The Associated Press
01 Oct 2006 11:19 pm
It's been almost 10 years since Sharon Bryant's daughter, Berry, was raped and murdered by a fellow student at Northwest College.
Bryant says she still aches - and she worries that too many men still don't take no for an answer.
"Berry fought hard for the right to say 'no,' and it's my obligation to continue to tell women they can say 'no' and to tell men they need to respect that," Bryant said.
Berry Bryant was a saxophone player and a cross country runner in high school, and she quickly made friends as an 18-year-old freshman at Northwest College. On the night of Oct. 5, 1996, she attended a school dance, then went to a small party in a dormitory room, where another Northwest College freshman, Levi Collen, was present.
People reported seeing Collen and Bryant leave together.
That was the last time she was seen alive.
According to police, Collen drove about 16 miles outside of Powell, and when Berry Bryant tried to walk back, he went after her with a hunting knife. She was raped, her face was cut and her hands were slashed as she tried to fend off the knife. Eventually, Collen cut her throat and stashed her body in the sagebrush.
Collen told friends at his dorm that he'd gotten into a fight with another man, and they agreed to go with him to the spot to retrieve his knife. When he told them on the way that he'd actually raped and killed Bryant, his friends restrained Collen and turned him over to Powell police.
John Cox, now director of the Wyoming Department of Transportation, was Powell police chief at the time.
Cox still describes it as "probably the most brutal homicide I had been associated with as a law enforcement officer."
Collen eventually confessed to police and was sentenced to prison.
In the decade since her daughter was killed, Bryant has spoken at school assemblies, written newspaper columns, even marched in Washington to try to draw attention to sexual violence.
Court denies rapist's claims
ANTHONY LANE
02 Sep 2006 12:00 am
A Mills man's sentence of life imprisonment in a brutal rape and kidnapping case from 2004 will stand, the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
Ronald Gorseth argued that the report that was used when he was sentenced to two consecutive life-terms in prison was incomplete and unfairly slanted against him.
The Supreme Court disagreed, finding that the probation officer who wrote the report complied with the rules that govern preparation of pre-sentence investigations. Gorseth was arrested Dec. 6, 2004, after he attacked a 26-year-old woman who was loading her 3-year-old daughter into a child seat outside the Kum & Go convenience store at McKinley and 15th streets. According to police, he forced the woman to perform repeated sexual acts as he drove up and then parked on Casper Mountain.
The woman later managed to attract the attention of bystanders after Gorseth stopped at a Paradise Valley gas station.
Judge affirms his oversight
Associated Press
12 Aug 2006 12:16 am
A federal judge has refused the state's request to end his supervision of the Wyoming Department of Corrections and the state penitentiary in Rawlins.
U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer entered an order this week saying staff failures to document conflicts among inmates amount to ongoing violations of inmates' rights to reasonable protection.
Letter: Not all sex offenders put on Internet list
Wendy Bowles
06 Aug 2006 12:00 am
The Big Horn County listing of Wyoming sex offenders on the Internet does not list any offenders living within the county. I am shocked because I am aware that this county does, indeed, have sex offenders. One I am aware of lives across the street from the new elementary school building site.
Wyoming has three degrees of sexual offense. Only the high-risk cases are posted at the Web site. This makes no sense to me. Who has the right to determine how high (or low) a sexual offense is? I was a victim of a predator as a child (duration of four years) and again as an adult-rape victim. Either act is extremely emotionally debilitating, no high or "low" about it.
Mother of child approached by Adams relieved
Fowler has not previously been identified in the Star-Tribune, but her concerns about the activities of a registered sex offender named Timothy Adams resulted in publication of a story in the newspaper about a year ago.
The 47-year-old asked at the time not to be named in the story, which reported Adams' attempts to befriend her son during open gym sessions at McKinley Elementary School. The family later learned that Adams was a registered high-risk sex offender known by the name of Timothy Freeman.
Committee hears testimony on sex offender bills
Rose Kor , executive director of Prevent Child Abuse Wyoming, said Wyoming has some of the most lax sex offender penalties in the country and more of these offenders were coming to the state because the laws are not tough enough.
"Some penalties for poaching are stiffer than penalties against child sex offenders," she said. "This says we put greater value on our game animals than on our children. We need stronger, stiffer sentences for these types of crimes."
