Man sentenced to 2 to 4 years for sex assault
More than a decade passed before a woman who was hospitalized for a suicide attempt revealed she was raped as a child.
On Friday in Washington County Court, the man she accused was sentenced to serve two to four years in prison on a charge of sexual assault.
Curtis Ray Thompson Jr., 30, of Scenery Hill, must then spend 16 months on probation on charges of indecent assault and making terroristic threats, according to the sentence imposed by Judge Gary Gilman.
“She was supposed to be swimming in a backyard pool and eating ice cream,” Assistant Attorney General Laura Ditka said of the victim. “And someone took her into a basement and raped her” at age 5. Thompson was also accused of threatening the victim if she revealed the assault.
In a statement about the impact the crime has had on her, the woman wrote of “years of living in hell,” but continued, “I’ll forgive you (because) if I never forgive you, I’ll never move on with my life.”
The girl’s mother, in a similar statement, wrote of Thompson, “You act like a victim but you are not a victim. You and your family have put the blame on the girl, but you need to put the blame on yourself. Your mother put down my daughter, in a church of all things, calling her a liar.”
Both the victim and her mother, in their statements, called Thompson “a monster.”
Ditka called to the witness stand another young woman who wanted to read an impact statement in court, but Thompson’s defense attorney, Chris Blackwell, in a sidebar conference with the prosecutor and judge, objected. Gilman did not permit her to testify and, amid tears, she returned to a seat in the audience.
Blackwell later said he thwarted her testimony because the would-be witness would have spoken about an allegation for which charges had not been filed.
Thompson chose not to respond in court, although, in October, he entered pleas of no contest to the three charges in exchange for the dismissal of a rape charge. Thompson was originally charged with sexually assaulting two girls in 2001 while baby-sitting them at a Cokeburg home and at another home in Scenery Hill, but one of the victims declined to testify at a preliminary hearing so that set of charges was dismissed. As his case was about to be tried in October, the prosecution had two more alleged victims who were prepared to testify against him.
Blackwell, said Thompson, 14 years later, has “lived an exemplary life, is an assistant chief of his fire department, and “has no criminal record as an adult.” Thompson is a member of Local 66 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, and he also works as a cattle farmer.
Blackwell first asked that Gilman impose only a probationary sentence, but when the judge pronounced the penalty, he asked if Thompson could be incarcerated in Washington County jail and be given work release.
Ditka did not object to local incarceration, but she spoke against work release, and the judge said Thompson, who has been free on bond, would have to begin serving his sentence March 1, but as a state prison inmate rather than a county prisoner. Thompson is also required to comply with a lifetime reporting requirement as a sexual offender.
The Washington County district attorney’s office passed the case onto the state attorney general because Thompson Jr.’s father, Curtis Thompson, is a district judge in Bentleyville. The magisterial district judge and a host of other family members filled the third-floor courtroom.
Because of the senior Thompson’s position, the Washington County district attorney’s office asked the attorney general’s office to handle the case.