People do things every day to protect themselves from potential harm. They lock their doors, their windows, buy guard dogs, leave lights on outside their homes. There are so many ways that people attempt to secure their environments from potential predatory behavior from strangers.
Yet everyday thousands of people will go online from inside their cozy homes and they will unlock a different kind of door for strangers to enter through. There is nothing more harmful than a false sense of security in a situation where being clandestine is commonly expected.
NY- In May of 2010, on a Sunday afternoon, a 24 year old woman from the website Mocospace.com answered an internet post regarding employment. The "ad"/forum post was looking for a secretary who could work Monday through Friday. The job paid $600.00 an hour and a car would be provide.
When she arrived at her destination, a 53 year old man named Richard Bailey greeted her. He asked her to follow him upstairs to the second floor. He told her it led to his "office". The woman followed him and when she got up the stairs she began to feel uneasy. The floor was covered in garbage and didn't look like an "office". It looked like an empty apartment. When she began to feel like something was wrong, it was too late. She told Bailey that she was going to leave, but he wasn't going to allow her to go so easily.
For an unspecified amount of time, the woman was at his mercy. He attacked her and then violated her in terrifying and painful ways. She was vaginally and anally raped. Her assault was brutal and painful to say the least.
However, this wasn't Bailey's first sexual offense. In July 1998, he was charged by authorities in Pennsylvania with charges including indecent assault and corruption of a minor. Bailey was on probation when he met, raped and sodomized the woman he met on mocospace.com
Bailey was a registered level one sex offender, serving a six-year term of probation for a sex offense conviction
He had been charged with first-degree rape and second-degree criminal sex act for the attack. Bailey pleaded guilty, in a plea deal in that case, to a lesser charge of sexual misconduct.
A judge sentenced him to six years of probation and then classified him as just a level one sex offender. Level one offenders are considered the lowest risks to commit another sex crime.
March 3, 2011, Bailey plead guilty to two counts of first-degree sexual abuse. He had originally been charged by a grand jury with first-degree rape and predatory sexual assault.
As part of his plea deal, prosecutors have agreed to recommend that the Judge make his sentences in the two separate cases concurrent. However, prosecutors reserved their right to ask for consecutive sentences on the sex abuse charges which could result in a 14-year prison term for Bailey.
“He understands that he could get up to 14 years if the court gives him the maximum sentence,” defense attorney Christopher Privateer said. “He has agreed to take a plea to the two (sex abuse charges) and take his chance at sentencing.”
As a result of his plea, prosecutors will drop the rape charge and a criminal sex act count.
In December, Bailey was convicted after a trial for violating the terms of his state sex offender registration and has been awaiting sentencing on that conviction.
Bailey’s sex offender violation conviction stemmed from his use of a computer without telling his probation officer.
Niagara Gazette
