|
Man receives 30 days in rape case
Tuesday, January 27, 2009 11:08 AM PST
COQUILLE — The victim of a 22-year-old church volunteer’s sexual advances shared her story in court Monday, reading from a prepared statement in between sobs.
The victim focused on the emotional toll of sleeping with a man seven years her senior. She left it to Coos County District Attorney R. Paul Frasier to fill in the details of what happened and a Curry County judge to sentence the man, Damon J. Noel, on Monday to 30 days in jail and three years probation for the crime.
 Damon Noel, convicted
Noel picked her up at the Boys & Girls Club on Nov. 24. He took her back to his home and into his bedroom, where music was playing and candles were burning. They had sex.
Four days later, police arrested Noel. He pleaded guilty on Jan. 14 to a charge of third-degree rape.
Frasier said Noel established a relationship with his 15-year-old victim by volunteering at College Park Community Church in North Bend.
“He used his position to ingratiate himself with her,” he said following the hearing.
The teenager’s mom said her daughter appeared distraught in the days following her sexual rendezvous. The mother visited her daughter’s MySpace account, where a message was posted that something had happened between her and Noel. She then went to her daughter’s cell phone, where she found text messages from Noel that were extremely inappropriate, she said.
When she confronted the teenager with these things, she started crying, her mother said.
The whole family drove over to the North Bend Police Department, where officers asked that the girl call Noel to see how he would respond. Frasier said Noel suggested the girl should lie to police about what had happened.
“‘Well, I could go to jail if you tell the truth,’” Frasier read from transcripts of the phone conversation, which was recorded. “‘Please, God, lie your ass off.’”
Instead, the girl suggested meeting with Noel near Boynton Park, where police arrested Noel on Nov. 28. Frasier said Noel admitted to police that he had sex with the girl knowing she was younger than 16 (see definition below).
Judge Jesse Margolis stepped in to oversee the sentencing due to a scheduling conflict among Coos County judges. Before Margolis issued his ruling, Noel apologized to the girl, her family as well as his. He said he hadn’t intended to harm the girl, though he knew what he did was wrong.
“My actions were still very irresponsible,” he said.
The girl testified, describing the anguish of taking a rape exam, worrying about becoming pregnant and no longer feeling safe at church.
“Now my friends and family see a different me. ... They see a young girl just trying to hold it all together and not show the ugly feeling this crime put inside of me,” she said.
As part of his sentence, Noel will be registered as a sex offender and must take an HIV test. He also will be restricted from having contact with juveniles and the church. Frasier said the sentence was the maximum he could obtain given Noel’s relatively crime-free background.
At least half a dozen members of the church’s youth group attended the hearing. Corinna Warner, 18, said she considered Noel a really close friend when he was arrested but thought he should have gotten a harsher sentence.
“(She) is going to be shaken up about this for a lot more than a month,” she said, contrasting it to Noel’s punishment for the crime.
Tina Guetterman, the church’s youth leader, said the experience has been hard for the group and the church, though everyone has rallied around the girl.
“I think he messed up,” she said. “I think he made a terrible mistake.”
The girl’s mother said she was disappointed the crime doesn’t fall under the Measure 11 statute requiring harsher minimum sentences, though she takes solace in knowing that if Noel commits a future crime, he will face a stiffer penalty.
“We hope (she) is the last victim,” she said.
Noel’s aunt, the Rev. Barbara Fernell, of Marina, Calif., was in attendance at the hearing and suggested both Noel and the girl were victims, though the judge had to go by the law.
“A young girl shouldn’t go to a man’s house and a young man shouldn’t take a woman to his house. Children should think twice,” she said. |
