Roberson Trial Considered Text Of Sex-Ring Investigation

WATERVILLE, Douglas County - For four days now, prosecutors have told a jury here that the child sex-abuse case against Robert and Connie Roberson begins within the walls of an East Wenatchee church and the couple's nearby home.

It was inside those buildings, they say, that the Robersons raped or molested five children, including their 5-year-old daughter.

But on cross-examination, the Robersons' defense attorneys tell another story.

The case against the Pentecostal pastor and his wife, they say, begins across the wide Columbia River, where Wenatchee Police Detective Robert Perez has led a sweeping child-sex-ring investigation.

If Robert Roberson had not publicly criticized Perez and the investigation, his attorneys say, the couple would not be sitting in court this week, accused by the same children whose allegations fueled the investigation.

Amid criticism that Perez and others used children to target innocent people, many throughout the Wenatchee Valley and across the country look to the Roberson trial as a test of that wider child-sex-ring investigation.

If the Robersons are convicted, they will be only the second and third adults to go to prison on sex-ring charges. Others are serving time on charges of incest or of sexually abusing children in isolated situations.

If the Robersons are found not guilty, some say it will prove they were unfairly targeted, thrown in jail and separated from their daughter for months based on groundless allegations.

Authorities on both sides of the Columbia insist the case against the Robersons is separate - investigated independently by Douglas County Sheriff's detectives and brought by that county's prosecutor.

But the links are clear.

The alleged child victims in the Roberson case - with the exception of the Robersons' daughter, who has never directly accused her parents - first told their stories of abuse to Wenatchee police. All but one child first told their story to Perez.

Douglas County authorities only began investigating the Robersons after Perez turned over a stack of written reports to them. They arrested the couple after talking to one alleged victim - Perez's 11-year-old foster daughter - and reading a confession by a woman who afterward said Perez had put words in her mouth.

In the only other case tried in Douglas County, a jury acquitted Honnah Sims, a Sunday-school teacher charged with sexually abusing children at the church. The jury foreman later said he felt there was no evidence against Sims, and the case never should have been brought to court. A fourth Douglas County suspect, a man who drove kids to and from the church, has seen two of the four charges against him dropped. He is awaiting trial.

The Roberson-Perez link

Robert and Connie Roberson are no strangers to the cast of characters charged in the Wenatchee sex-ring cases. Many listed as suspects and victims had visited the Robersons' run-down Pentecostal Church of God House of Prayer since the couple came to the church in 1989.

Robert Roberson was particularly close to the family whose two daughters would later become Perez's foster children. Roberson often spent time with the family's oldest boy, who would accompany him as he made rounds in his auto wrecker or gathered supplies for the church's food bank.

In September 1994, the youngest daughter, who by then was living with the Perezes, told him she'd been sexually abused by her parents. Roberson didn't believe it. He talked to her siblings. Within days, he was called by a social worker and told that Perez wanted him to stay away from the kids.

Months later, Roberson went public with his defense of the parents and his criticism of Perez and the prosecution. At a January 1995 sentencing hearing for the mother, Roberson said he feared he would become a target if he spoke out.

Within two weeks, Perez called the Douglas County Sheriff's Office, which had jurisdiction over Roberson's church, and said he had information that children may have been raped there.

Alleged victim dropped

Prosecutors originally built their case around two alleged child victims, including Perez's 11-year-old foster daughter.

Days before the trial began, prosecutors dramatically changed the case. They announced new charges, including those involving the Robersons' daughter, and quietly dropped some older charges based on tainted testimony. That testimony had been given by a girl who admitted to officials she'd falsely accused others of rape.

Prosecutors have said they will build their new case around the testimony of several children and one adult witness, 42-year-old Gary Filbeck, who had previously been convicted of child sex abuse.

Last week, Filbeck told the jury he saw Robert Roberson molest his own daughter and rape Perez's foster daughter on the church altar. Filbeck joined in and Connie Roberson watched, he said.

But that account by Filbeck, who has received government assistance for 16 years for being mentally "slow," in his own words, contradicted details he gave police during an earlier interview.

In exchange for agreeing to testify against the Robersons, Filbeck was given a significantly reduced plea agreement in Chelan County. Defense attorney Robert Van Siclen has subpoenaed Chelan County Prosecutor Gary Reisen to hear his explanation for the plea agreement.

The Robersons' own daughter, the only child to take the stand so far in this case, joked and laughed and pointed to her parents, who she'd seen only once since March. When asked by prosecutors if she'd ever received a "bad touch," she grew serious and answered "no." She then sang her "a, b, c's" for defense attorneys and left the courtroom.

But two adults took the stand to say that the Robersons' daughter had given strong indications she'd been abused. Donna Anderson, who'd been called in to counsel the girl after she was placed in foster care, said the Robersons' daughter drew a picture of herself lying on top of her father. She said her father taught her how to do it, Anderson said.

No body fluids found in church

Micki Reyes-Vogan, the foster mother who cared for the girl after the Robersons' arrest, said the girl told her "my dad put his tongue in my mouth," and gave other indications she may have been abused.

Defense attorneys say these accounts are suspect. Reyes-Vogan, who runs a crowded foster home, had founded and organized "The Purple Ribbon Brigade," a group of parents supporting Perez and the investigation. The defense points out that the girl made the sexual statements to Reyes-Vogan only after living for weeks in close quarters with other foster children, some victims of sex abuse.

Police investigators called by the prosecution detailed a state-of-the-art search of the church in which laser lighting was used to locate body fluids. No traces of semen nor any physical evidence of sexual abuse was found.

Over the next several days, the jury is scheduled to hear from three of the four older children who have accused the Robersons. Perez's 11-year-old foster daughter has testified in several trials already but will not take the stand in this case.

These older children are at the center of the group that has made the broader allegations about loosely organized sex rings. Prosecutors say their words on the stand will make the case.

Defense attorneys say their contradicting testimony will lay bare the problems with the kids' statements.

One to be called is a 15-year-old boy who was the first to allege sexual abuse at the Robersons' house, in a statement to Perez. According to a police report, the boy told Perez that Roberson made the kids have sex in front of him.

But in an interview with defense attorneys, the boy said he never saw any sex abuse of younger children. And when asked to detail the time he was sexually abused in the church, he had trouble placing details of the assault or identifying who had abused him.

The prosecution is not planning to call as witnesses many of the Chelan County authorities involved in the wider sex-ring investigation.

But the witness defense attorneys are most eager to hear from does not come from Douglas County, or the East Wenatchee neighborhood where the Robersons live and run their church.

When it's their turn, the defense will call Perez.