Ex-Con Given 21 Years in Sex Assault on Hosts’ Sons

An ex-convict who was invited to live with a Sepulveda couple after being released from a state prison was sentenced Monday to 21 years in prison after a jury convicted him on Feb. 26 of committing lewd acts on the couple’s two boys.

“I guess we were too trusting,” said Marilyn Deedon after the sentencing by Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Alan B. Haber.

Deedon and her husband, Donn, had agreed to let Richard Honeywell, 43, a former neighbor, live in their home with them and their seven children after Honeywell was released last July from a state prison. Honeywell had served most of a five-year sentence at Atascadero State Hospital for raping a 13-year-old girl. He was transferred to the prison shortly before his release.

Knew of Rape Conviction

Marilyn Deedon, who said she and her husband were aware of the rape conviction, said that Honeywell had assured them that he had been reformed in the prison hospital and had turned to Christianity.

“I confronted him with my concerns, and he told us that he loved our family, and that he’d never do anything to harm any of us,” she said. “We wanted the best for him. We wanted him to make it, and we were there to help him along the way.”

Before his 1980 conviction, Honeywell had lived next door to the Deedon family. While he was incarcerated, the couple often visited him at the prison hospital.

But, after the Deedons confronted Honeywell with allegations by their sons, ages 8 and 9, that he had sexually molested the boys on Aug. 14, Honeywell fled to Tennessee. He was arrested in October and was extradited to California in November.

Accused of Lewd Acts

Honeywell subsequently was charged with three separate counts of committing lewd acts on children under the age of 14.

Before his last conviction, Honeywell had been arrested twice in Pennsylvania for rape, but the charges, stemming from arrests in 1963 and 1964, were reduced each time to adultery, according to court documents. In 1969, he was convicted of raping a teen-age girl, also in Pennsylvania, the records show. Honeywell was sent to Atascadero in 1980 after being convicted for the rape of another teen-age girl in Los Angeles, according to a probation department report.

He could have been sentenced to a maximum of 23 years in prison, said prosecutor Norman Montrose. He will be eligible for parole in 10 1/2 years.