Rapist draws more time

PALMER — Despite a parole board recommendation of no more prison time, a convicted rapist got another year for contacting the sister of his victims.

Earl Norman Ray, 37, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in October of 1995. Every Alaskan convict is entitled to a one-third reduction in his sentence if he obeys prison rules.

In 1995, police said he had met the mother of three young girls in a bar and the woman had rebuffed him. A week later, police said, he let himself into the woman’s house, snuck past where she was sleeping, went upstairs and raped two girls, age 13 and 14, and a third, age 19, when she walked in on the assault.

A fourth sister testified in a hearing in June that just before Christmas in 2007, Ray approached her in the Longbranch Saloon in Anchorage. She wasn’t sure it was him at first but the incident was extremely unsettling. Later, after doing a bit of detective work and after seeing him in person at a parole hearing she was positive it was Ray who’d said very cryptic things to her at the bar. She reported it to his parole officer.

In a hearing in June, Ray’s attorney, Wallace Tetlow, argued that the sister couldn’t prove it was Ray she’d talked to that night.

Superior Court Judge Beverly Cutler disagreed and said that Ray’s behavior was akin to stalking.

Assistant District Attorney Trina Sears argued that for talking to the sister in the bar, Ray should have to serve one year of the 11 years suspended from his sentence.

“I think it is one of the more egregious violations he could’ve committed,” Sears said. “He couldn’t stop himself from continuing to intimidate them.”

She said she didn’t believe Ray had done well while on probation, pointing to problems he’d had with keeping and viewing pornography. Staying away from porn was one of the conditions of his probation.

For his part, Tetlow argued that the parole board didn’t think Ray should go back to prison and that Cutler should agree with that decision.

He pointed out that he talked to the sister just once and that was nearly two years ago.

“There were no allegations of threats directly to her in that contact,” Tetlow said. “There doesn’t appear to be a pattern of ongoing contact.”

He said that what his client needs now is to work hard on his rehabilitation, something he won’t be able to do as well in prison. He said Ray has a job and is working on his education — two things he’d have to give up if he returned to prison. And he said that the conditions of Ray’s parole were extremely stringent, mandating a curfew and including unannounced visits from parole officers.

Ray said he understood he had a lot of work to do to turn his life around.

“I do have a lot of problems. I struggle with pornography use,” he told the judge. “Incarceration would not solve these problem.”

Cutler, in handing down her decision, sided almost entirely with Sears. If suspended time isn’t imposed when someone offends like Ray did, she asked, why do judges tack it onto a person’s sentence in the first place?

“We’re seeing the behavior of a sexually deviant person,” she said. “It isn’t something that we’re going to take any more chances on.”

As for the finding of the parole board, she said that body has a different job to perform than she does.

“This court’s job… is to protect society from someone who was a horrific sexual offender,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.