Rape Victims Testify; 1 Identifies Suspect

A Huntington Beach woman described Thursday, at a preliminary hearing for a man accused of eight rapes over a 1 1/2-year period, how an assailant slipped into her bedroom in the middle of the night in November, 1986, and pressed a knife to her cheek.

“I wanted to scream, but the man put a hand over my mouth,” she said.

Robin Scott Dasenbrock, 23, is charged with 45 criminal acts that include rape, assault to commit rape, burglary, oral copulation, sodomy and prowling, dating back to November, 1985, in Huntington Beach and Fountain Valley. If convicted on all charges, he faces up to 220 years in prison, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael C. Koski.

Dasenbrock was arrested April 29 after a police dog on patrol with a Fountain Valley officer found him hiding in bushes about 500 yards from an apartment where an attempted rape had been reported two nights before. The Huntington Beach woman and three other victims of sexual assaults testified Thursday on the third day of Dasenbrock’s preliminary hearing in Westminster before West County Municipal Judge William L. Mock.

Three of the women testified that they were raped after an intruder threatened them with a knife and warned them that sleeping family members would be injured if they resisted. Two said they were told the intruder had a friend in the home who would harm their relatives, and the third said her 5-year-old son, sleeping in a nearby tent, was threatened directly.

“He told me I had better be quiet or he’d start putting a knife through the tent,” she testified.

Koski also introduced as evidence photos of knife scratches that two of the women suffered on their backs, legs and stomachs.

The fourth witness, who was not raped, drove her attacker away with a kick to the groin, she said. While she did not see a knife, she suffered a deep cut on her index finger.

Dasenbrock sat in a detention area of the courtroom through most of the testimony Thursday and out of view most of the time.

One woman positively named him as her attacker when he was brought forward to sit with his defense attorney, Gary Pohlson, for identification purposes. The woman looked toward Dasenbrock before leaving the courtroom and said loudly, “I feel sorry for him.”

None of the other three said they could be absolutely sure that Dasenbrock was the attacker. All four testified that they saw the attacker’s face for just a few seconds, if at all.

Koski said fingerprint evidence will be introduced later in the hearing.

Ten women victims have testified in the hearing. Thursday was the first day the hearing was open to the public. Mock closed the hearing last week when Pohlson argued that further publicity would harm Dasenbrock’s right to a fair trial.

Mock was overruled by a Superior Court judge Tuesday, and the hearing was opened. It is expected to end next week, and Mock will then decide whether Dasenbrock should be tried in Superior Court on the charges against him.

Dasenbrock is in Orange County Jail on $500,000 bail.