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Duran
sentenced
to 12 years in pen
More
allegations of sexual abuse
of children
may crop up
in
California & Oregon
By
Fred Mramor of
the Desert Journal
Confessed child
molester Ryan Duran was sentenced Thursday to 12 years in prison for his
sexual assaults upon two four-year-old girls last year.
Seventh Judicial District Judge Kevin
Sweazea imposed the maximum sentences of three years for criminal sexual
contact with a minor and nine years for attempted criminal sexual
penetration of a minor. Sweazea further ordered Duran to serve two years
probation following his consecutive prison terms and imposed $15,000 in
fines.
The judge said he doesn’t expect that
the fines will ever be paid but said he wants Duran’s crimes to follow
him for a long time.
Duran, 32, pleaded guilty in March to
criminal sexual contact with a minor for his assault on a four-year-old
girl last November. Duran attacked the child when she was at Duran’s
Truth or Consequences home to play with his four-year-old son.
It wasn’t until January that T or C
Police arrested Duran on a second-degree felony charge of kidnapping and a
third-degree felony charge of criminal sexual contact with a minor.
The mother of another four-year-old
girl recognized Duran’s name from January newspaper reports as her
daughter also had played with Duran’s son. When the mother asked, the
child indicated that her friend’s father had touched her.
A forensic interviewer examined the
girl after her mother called the police. The little girl’s gestures and
statements to the interviewer indicated that Duran penetrated her with his
finger in June last year.
Originally charged in the June assault
with first-degree criminal sexual penetration of a minor, Duran in March
pleaded to second-degree attempted criminal sexual penetration of a minor.
Asking the judge to impose the maximum
sentences, Assistant District Attorney June Stein during Thursday’s
sentencing hearing said Duran’s 60-day diagnostic evaluation says it
all: Duran is a pedophile, he has admitted to having these urges and is
unable to control them.
The victims and their families will
never be the same, Stein said.
District Attorney Clint Wellborn said
that he too has young daughters but that he can’t really know what the
families of Duran’s victims are going through.
Wellborn said the court can’t wave a
magic wand to make it all better but can send Duran to prison for 12 years
which will prevent Duran from victimizing other children and will serve as
a deterrent to other predators.
Wellborn said Duran poses a high risk
as a re-offender and that he took advantage of his son’s friendships
with other children that he could prey on.
The court should sentence Duran to 12
years in prison to provide as much protection as possible, and that while
the sentence won’t make the families whole, it is the most the court can
do for them, Wellborn said
Probation and Parole Officer Sissy
Richardson said that with Duran’s pervasive and recurring thoughts, he
will need at least 12 years for any hope of rehabilitation.
The grandmother of one of Duran’s
victims told the court that her granddaughter is not only her
grandfather’s little angel, as the little girl feared she may no longer
be, but that she is a miracle.
Addressing Duran, she said it was her
granddaughter’s persistence and determination to bring him to justice
that brought him where he is now.
The grandmother thanked Duran for not
denying the charges but said the tears he has shed were not for his
victims but for himself. She said her granddaughter has shed more tears
and has had more nightmares than any five-year-old should.
“We were taught as Christians to
forgive but we can’t forgive you yet. We pray that God will give us the
strength to forgive you,” the grandmother said to Duran.
The mother of the same little girl said
her family was changed forever on Nov. 10. She said she was the mother of
a happy, innocent four-year-old girl but Ryan Duran changed all that.
She said Duran used his own son to lure
neighborhood girls into his home so he could molest them and that her
daughter was one of those girls. He offered her cartoons, candy and soda
and humiliated her and exposed her to carnal abuse, the mother said.
She said her daughter kicked, screamed,
fought and tried to get away. The mother said Duran was fully aware that
what he was doing was wrong and that he tried to bribe the child with
candy to shut her up and sent her on her way as if nothing had happened.
She said her daughter immediately told
her what happened and she then called the police. The mother said the
police questioned Duran and he confessed to the crime, but the police did
not arrest him.
She said the police and the district
attorney’s office knew Duran had committed a crime against a minor and
was a continuing danger to children, living only yards from his victim,
but they refused to protect her daughter.
The mother said the police and DA’s
office in effect called her and her daughter liars. She said it wasn’t
until 10 days after the attack, and at her insistence, that they performed
a medical examination on the child.
She said the state refused to pay for a
meeting between the DA’s office and her daughter’s counselor to verify
her accounts of molestation and bring charges against Duran although they
had several confessions.
“During this entire time I was harassed, lied to, screamed
at and further victimized by the very system that was supposed to protect
us,” the mother said.
She said she contacted the police, the
DA’s office, the city manager and a New Mexico senator through phone
calls, faxes, letters and e-mails and only after bringing all this
pressure to bear did the DA’s office take action and do their job.
She said her daughter lived in constant
fear that Duran would attack her again for two months after the assault.
“She had to endure seeing her molester in town, taunting us at our
neighborhood park right outside our door. She was left to wonder why this
bad man isn’t in jail,” the mother said.
She said that since the November
attack, her daughter has nightmares almost every night and wakes up
screaming and paralyzed with fear. The mother said her daughter is afraid
of all men and has panic attacks if left alone in her room for fear that
one will come to hurt her.
She said her daughter is now given to
violent mood swings, hitting others, periods of depression, that she will
go without sleeping for days to avoid night terrors, has black circles
under her eyes and bursts into tears for no apparent reason.
The father of Duran’s other
four-year-old victim said to the court that when he moved his family to
New Mexico his daughter was a happy, trusting two-and-a-half-year old in
whose eyes he saw a beautiful and innocent little girl, but now when he
looks into her eyes he sees fear.
The father said his daughter has
nightmares almost every night, that she has ground her teeth to the nerves
and that she is terrified Duran will come to hurt her again. He said his
daughter fears that Duran’s wife will steal her away from her family.
The man said Duran raped his little
girl while Duran’s four-year-old son was in the same bed. He said his
daughter worries that Duran’s little boy, who was her first friend in
New Mexico, hates her for making his daddy go to jail.
The father said Duran targeted his
little girl knowing that she had cerebral palsy, which affects the way she
coordinates her body and even more her speech. He said Duran had to know
how hard it would be for the child to communicate what he did to her.
The father said the Durans moved from
one campground to another, staying at one only until accusations were
raised against Ryan Duran. He said Duran had always made children
available to him and that at one point Ryan and Ann Duran worked at a Head
Start daycare center.
The father said the ordeal has been
hell on his daughter, his wife and on him and that they are now
emotionally and financially drained. “He faces a maximum of 12 years. He
gave my daughter a life sentence,” the father said.
Defense attorney Gary Gaudette pleaded
for concurrent, rather than consecutive, sentences for his client.
He said Duran in letters to the court
expressed his remorse for what he did, knew it was wrong and sick, and had
thought about the same happening to his son.
Duran had stated he was drinking at the
time of the assaults but was not blaming his actions on alcohol, Gaudette
said.
Duran in his letter stated he was
having trouble with his marriage and in the bedroom but that he had always
been an honest man who provided for his family, the attorney said.
Duran said he never wants to harm
another child; that he wants to resume a normal life as he had before
committing his crimes. Duran realizes he has hurt his own family as well
as the children he victimized and their families, Gaudette said.
“With the help of God, counseling and self-will, I can put
this behind me,” the attorney quoted from Duran’s letter.
Reading from Duran’s letter to his
victims’ families, the attorney said Duran sat in jail everyday sick and
disgusted at what he did and that he sees the two lives he destroyed.
“I see in the mirror a person I
hate,” Duran’s said in his letter.
Duran said his uncle molested him when
he was a child, but Duran never told anyone, never sought help and
didn’t know it would be a problem, the attorney said.
Gaudette said Duran is ready to accept
his punishment and is truly sorry for what he did.
The attorney said he didn’t wish to
cause the victims’ families further distress but that he disagreed with
some of their statements.
Contradicting those statements,
Gaudette said Duran did not commit rape, there was no discharge of semen,
nor was there any rubbing of his body against either little girl.
Duran moved away from the victims and
did not taunt them, Gaudette said. He said his client should not be
sentenced for these misstatements.
Gaudette said Duran will never be able
to make amends but that he is trying to bring a quick resolution by his
plea agreements.
Before imposing sentence, Judge Sweazea
said the court is limited in what it can do for the victims and their
families and can only make them feel safe for a while.
The judge said the defense asked the
court for leniency because Duran pleaded to charges against him thus
sparing his child victims further trauma. But Sweazea said one purpose of
a sentence is to protect society and that in this case, that purpose will
be best served by Duran being sent to prison for 12 years.
...More
allegations may crop up
Duran and his
wife, Ann, may face charges of child molestation elsewhere.
The mother of one of Duran’s victims
said after the sentencing charges may be brought against Ann Duran in
other jurisdictions. She said Mrs. Duran was in the house when Ryan Duran
molested her daughter but local prosecutors won’t bring charges against
her.
T or C Police Detective Tom Schalkofski,
according to the victim’s mother, said there isn’t enough evidence to
prosecute Ann Duran here but that there may be in other states.
Det. Schalkofski Thursday morning said
he did an extensive background check on Duran. Schalkofski said Duran is
from the Los Angeles, California, area and from there moved to Medford,
Oregon, and then to San Jose, California. Schalkofski said Duran has
relatives in both states.
T or C Police have sent information to
San Jose, CA, and Medford, OR, Schalkofski said, adding that these
jurisdictions are investigating Duran for criminal sexual contact and
criminal sexual penetration of minors (young children).
"I understand victims are coming
forward against Duran (elsewhere)," the detective said.
Assistant DA June Stein said before
Thursday’s sentencing that she had heard also of allegations against
Duran in Rialto, California. Stein said there have been conversations
between local authorities and authorities in California and Oregon but
that she has had no confirmation of allegations against Duran from those
jurisdictions.
A Medford Police Department clerk in a
telephone interview Thursday said Medford Police have had contact with the
names Ryan and Ann Duran but could provide no further information.
A representative of the District
Attorney’s office of Jackson County, Oregon, said they are not
investigating any case involving the Durans and that she is not familiar
with their names.
An assistant to the Rialto, California
Chief of Police said she is not aware of any investigation of the Durans.
Representatives from the DA’s office in nearby Fontana, California, and
from the San Bernardino County DA’s office also had no knowledge of
investigations involving the Durans.
Ann Duran filed for dissolution of her
marriage in May, according to court documents.
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