Sought Reduced Prison Term in Exchange : Rapist’s Castration Offer Rejected

A Lebanese immigrant sentenced this week in the kidnaping, rape and sodomy of three Hollywood prostitutes in Canyon Country has offered to undergo castration in exchange for a reduced prison term.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office rejected the offer as “bizarre and extrajudicial,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Kenneth A. Loveman, and Rabih Hamdo Alkharsa, 35, was sentenced to nine years and eight months in state prison.

The offer of castration was made through Alkharsa’s lawyer shortly after the defendant pleaded no contest in March to one count of rape, two counts of sodomy by force and one count of jumping bail. The offer was disclosed Wednesday when he was sentenced by San Fernando Superior Court Judge John H. Majors.

Alkharsa, an unemployed Hollywood accountant, was suspected of kidnaping and raping five prostitutes in a one-month period in 1985, but prosecutors were unable to file charges in all the cases because the women could not be located or refused to appear in court, Loveman said.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies arrested Alkharsa in May, 1985, with a kidnaped 17-year-old prostitute. The deputies were conducting a stakeout in the area where several of the attacks had occurred.

The girl said Alkharsa had picked her up in Hollywood and that they had agreed upon a price for a sex act at his home, authorities said. Instead, Alkharsa drove her to the remote location, assaulted her and threatened to kill her, she said.

Another of Alkharsa’s victims testified that he told her that he was a vice officer and planned to take her to jail, then drove her to a dirt road near Canyon Country and repeatedly raped and sodomized her.

While free on bail, Alkharsa fled to Lebanon and missed a January, 1986, court appearance. Alkharsa returned to the United States and was captured June 15. He testified that he had gone to Beirut to visit his ailing mother and had been unable to get out of Lebanon until June 2.

Alkharsa said he was sworn in as a U.S. citizen June 3 and had intended to wait until June 13 to surrender to the court because he was waiting for citizenship documentation to be completed.

U.S. immigration officials say they have no record of Alkharsa becoming a citizen.

Alkharsa was arrested at a Van Nuys house after a two-month search by a bounty hunter hired by the firm that posted Alkharsa’s $7,500 bail. The bounty hunter, Ian L. Sitren, testified during a preliminary hearing that the defendant offered him “any sum of money I wanted” in exchange for his release.