Sleeping pills weighed in sex assault

PALMER — Was a California man in full control of his faculties when he molested two Valley girls or had sleeping pills left him in a state close to sleepwalking?

That’s one of the questions Superior Court Judge Vanessa White will be asked to decide in the case of Mario Paradiso.

Paradiso, 55, was arrested in December, 2007, as he was leaving the state to go back to California. The girls, ages 5 and 7, told Alaska State Troopers on Dec. 27 that Paradiso had molested them.

The trial has been progressing for the past week as a bench trial with White, rather than a jury, asked to make the final decision on guilt or innocence.

Raymond A. Grimsbo, a forensic scientist out of Portland, Ore., was on the stand Monday. He said the sleeping pill Ambien has, as a known side effect, a type of amnesia akin to sleepwalking. Paradiso was taking the drug at the time of the molestation.

White, in talking to Grimsbo, tried to elicit from him what a person in that sleepwalking state would be aware of in the moment.

Using alcohol as a metaphor, she asked Grimsbo to choose between two scenarios, “When I got drunk I didn’t know I was dancing on the bar or I forgot I was dancing on the bar?”

Both, Grimsbo said. When the person had finally emerged from the sleepwalking he wouldn’t remember much of anything. But in the moment the person also wouldn’t know what he was doing.

If the person were aware of his actions, Grimsbo said, “the individual’s inhibitions, given that they had inhibitions, would take over.”

Assistant District Attorney Paul Roetman, during his turn questioning Grimsbo, poked holes in the theory that Paradiso had no idea what he was doing.

Working from a transcript of a conversation police taped between Paradiso and the girls’ mother, he read some of Paradiso’s statements, pausing after each one to ask if they seemed to indicate a memory of the event. Grimsbo said they did. Those statements included:

“I was the adult, I let it get carried away.”

“They were bouncing on my stomach… that’s the only thing I could think that would do it.”

Roetman asked Grimsbo if the statements seemed to be from someone who remembered, “enough to know he did something wrong.”

Grimsbo said it did.

On his turn questioning Grimsbo, Paradiso’s attorney, Sam Westergren, went in the opposite direction.

Westergren asked Grimsbo, “is there any statement in there where he flat admitted to any act of molestation?”

Grimsbo said there was not.

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