72.5 years for child molester

PALMER — Unless he lives to be 100 as a model inmate, Lyn Roger Christian will not live to see life outside of a jail cell again.

That is, assuming his conviction stands.

“We intend to file an appeal,” said his attorney, Bruce Brown at Christian’s sentencing hearing Thursday, though the judge who sentenced him described motions to set the trial aside as “grasping at straws.”

The abuse happened in 2009, but Christian, 52, was arrested until June 2011. He was eventually convicted of sexually abusing two girls between the ages of 7 and 10. At trial, his defense was that most of the accusations were made up and that the girl was sexually precocious and prone to age-inappropriate experimentation.

Prosecutor Trina Sears urged Superior Court Judge Beverly Cutler to impose a sentence of 111 years with 38 suspended for 73 to serve. She asked that the judge consider “what he took away from her, from this child.”

She noted that the Legislature has seen fit to make first-degree sexual abuse of a minor punishable by up to 99 years in prison.

“I certainly could’ve asked for 150 years to serve or something along those lines. I asked, I believe, for a reasonable sentence,” Sears said.

Brown, for his part, noted that his client protested his innocence. He said that the jury didn’t get to hear all of the evidence he wanted them to and that he believed it was the girl’s mother who introduced the girl to pornography and sex.

“This is so out of character for him that (his girlfriend) doesn’t believe he could have done all those things which he’s accused of,” Brown said.

Brown conceded that Christian did have a conviction on his record for indecently exposing himself to young girls on the Kenai Peninsula, but said that was an accident; they saw him walking around his own home naked.

“Mr. Christian is not careful around children with his body and his nakedness,” Brown said.

The girl’s mother read a prepared statement to the court.

“Do not let this man out to hurt someone else’s child,” she urged Judge Cutler. “My daughter needs to know that her bravery in coming forward was not for nothing.”

She said her daughter at times screamed and cried daily, at one point was suicidal and has to cover the mirrors in the bathroom to avoid seeing herself when she takes a shower.

“Because of what this man did to her she stopped loving herself,” she said.

Cutler, in handing down the sentence that was just one half-year shorter than what Sears asked for — 110.5 years with 72.5 to serve — said that whether the harsh sentence she was handing down was good or bad is “almost irrelevant.” She is required to do what the Legislature decided was correct.

“There’s not an iota of concern on my part that there’s somehow been a miscarriage of justice,” she said.

She said she found evidence of Christian’s guilt “extremely credible” and his victim’s testimony an example of “genuine kid honesty.”

As for why Christian protested his innocence, “it’s not uncommon in human nature to withdraw and preserve what’s left of yourself and ignore what’s right there in front of your face,” the judge said.

In Alaska, prisoners are allowed up to one-third reduction in their prison sentences for good behavior. The earliest Christian could get out, then, is after he’s served just over 48 years, just shy of his 101st birthday.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or

andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.