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http://www.oregonlive.com/news/argus/index.ssf?/base/news/1180720520220340.xml&coll=6
Jury hears Hillsboro sexual 'slave master' trial Thursday
Friday, June 01, 2007
By Kurt Eckert
The Argus
Washington County prosecutors began arguments Thursday that a Hillsboro man kidnapped, raped, abused and sodomized two women in a "sex-slave den" more than 15 years ago.
In opening statements, Senior Deputy District Attorney Jeff Lesowski told the jury of nine women and three men that Vance Jay Roberts, 52, and his half-brother, Paul E. Jackson, 36, kidnapped at least two Portland prostitutes and held them against their will in a home on Northeast Olympic Avenue.
Roberts and Jackson were arrested in June of 1990, but disappeared before a hearing scheduled for February 1991. Police nationwide searched for the pair, but they seemed to have vanished, Lesowski said.
"They did what's called jumping bail," because they feared long-term incarceration, Lesowski said. Roberts unexpectedly turned himself in at the Washington County Jail last September.
Court-appointed defense attorney Lawrence Taylor said the women were willing participants in "fantasies" that involved bondage, sex toys and lurid photographs. Roberts came back to face the unfounded charges, he said.
"He's tired of running from charges he's innocent of," Taylor said.
The method was the same in both alleged abductions, Lesowski said. Airline records show Jackson would fly in from Phoenix regularly to visit Roberts. On at least two dates, once in 1988 and once in 1990, Roberts cruised the streets of Portland in his "beater" Datsun pickup looking for hookers. Once a deal was struck, he would drive the women to a remote location. At that point, Jackson would emerge from the covered bed of the pickup and the women would be forced into the back. They were chained to a U-bolt, hooded with a pillowcase and driven to the Hillsboro home. While Jackson drove, the women said Roberts would repeatedly sodomize them.
Things only got worse when they arrived at the home, Lesowski said. The women were chained up in a partially sound-proofed storage room off the master bedroom. The men wore masks and didn't speak out loud for fear of being identified, he said. Along with repeated rapes, the women were forcibly sodomized with sex toys and other objects and photographed wearing diapers and performing sex acts.
Taylor said the women were well aware of what was going to happen at the home. The first woman's alleged six-day ordeal in 1988 was more like a vacation, he said. She made up the sex-slave story to hide her actions from her violent pimp, who would be angry she wasn't out making money, he said.
Police say that in June of 1990, the second victim, a Portland teenager, slipped out of her shackles, broke a window and ran, screaming and bloody, to a neighbor's house. The neighbor called 9-1-1.
Police and fire crews responded immediately, Lesowski said. All the grisly evidence they found inside - masks, sex toys and lubricants - matched the stories told by the second victim.
The 1988 case was later linked to the charges because of the similarities in a story told to Portland police.
"It's challenging trying a case this old," Lesowski said. "But I think we're going to be able to do it."
Taylor said the second woman ran because she was a drug addict who was trying to rob Roberts.
"After a day in the home, she needs her drugs, and she has got to go," Taylor said. Given the women's occupation, and Roberts and Jackson's plausible account to police, the jury could find Roberts guilty of soliciting prostitution, but little else, he said.
Both women and the neighbor were scheduled to testify Thursday.
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