Lottery Millionaire Under Legal Siege by Woman He Attacked

The past year has been a turning point in the lives of Becky Rasnick and Raymond Wilson.

Wilson, a 20-year-old fast-food worker, won $5.86 million in the California lottery. Rasnick, a 28-year-old Ventura homemaker, was sexually attacked on the rural path where she jogs almost every day. What brought them together was that Wilson attacked Rasnick.

Now Rasnick and Wilson are confronting each other again. Rasnick and her husband, Ben, filed a lawsuit seeking to deprive Wilson, who was convicted in the attack, of his lottery prize. If they succeed, the Rasnicks could receive Wilson’s winnings of $234,400 a year through 2007--a windfall they claim that they would use to fight abortion and pornography.

For the Rasnicks, the lawsuit has grown into a moral battle. Deviant sexual behavior, legalized gambling, a liberal justice system--to the traditional Rasnicks, Raymond Wilson symbolizes America gone awry.

Wilson, obsessed with sex ever since he was molested as a boy, says the Rasnicks’ suit could jeopardize what is possibly his best shot at redemption. Now serving a one-year sentence in the Ventura County Jail for attempted rape, Wilson was ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment and had planned to use his lottery fortune to cover the cost of his therapy.

Lottery officials said they were unaware of any other millionaire winner who had been convicted of a felony, although they do not keep track of the winners.

The suit was filed last month in Ventura County Superior Court.

A victory for the Rasnicks would be devastating to Wilson, said his lawyer, James M. Farley of Ventura. Farley said his client is remorseful. Farley also suggested that the unusual case blurs the lines between winners and losers, victims and attackers, and poses a question of justice.

“How do you express remorse, and how much is enough?” Farley said. “There are always two sides to every story.”

Wilson’s Jan. 21 attack on Becky Rasnick was a violent aberration in her otherwise secure and tranquil life.

The youngest of three children, she grew up among dozens of cousins in the fold of the Missionary Church, an outgrowth of the Mennonite movement whose founders in Ventura County include Rasnick’s relatives. Her uncle, the Rev. John Cherry, established the county’s first Missionary Church in downtown Ventura; her father, contractor Gene Cherry, moved from Illinois to build it.

Becky Rasnick attended church three times a week and lived comfortably, supported by the family-owned Cherry Construction Co. She graduated from Buena High School and enrolled at Cal State Northridge, majoring in communications. There, she began dating Ben Rasnick, a young man three years older who grew up in the same Ventura neighborhood.

Becky married Ben at 19 in a ceremony performed by her Uncle John. She left college and two years later became a mother. She and Ben live with their two sons--Nathan, 6, and Dustin, 4--in a large, New England-style house custom-built by the family business.

Everything in the immaculate home speaks of family, tradition and security: the living room’s Yankee blue carpet and lace curtains, the wedding album on the coffee table, the calming whir of the clothes dryer.

On the Saturday that Becky was attacked, Ben Rasnick, an electrical engineer, was mowing the lawn. She started on her regular five- to seven-mile course up Foothill Road, past lemon and avocado trees, about 5:30 p.m., later than usual because so many friends had visited that day.

About 10 minutes into the run, Rasnick says, she noticed Wilson standing by his truck but kept running because motorists often park along Foothill to pick lemons or watch sunsets. As she passed, the man began to run after her. Rasnick looked back and saw that his pants were open and that the man was masturbating.

According to court records, Rasnick ran into the middle of the road calling for help and Wilson chased her. He pulled her into a drainage ditch, pushed her down and tried to pull off her blue shorts. During the struggle, Wilson grabbed Rasnick by the throat with both hands and she began to lose consciousness.

“I was blacking out,” Rasnick said in an interview. “I couldn’t breathe for the longest time. I thought my life was over, I really did.”

Rasnick said she broke free when a passing van distracted Wilson. She flagged down a Subaru and the two women inside took her home. Ben was still mowing the lawn, and the boys were playing outside when the car pulled up and Becky tumbled out, bruised and frightened.

Wilson was arrested Feb. 10 after police traced his truck’s license number to his Santa Monica apartment. Four months earlier, on Oct. 12, he had won a Lotto jackpot on a Quick Pick ticket.

Although he pleaded guilty to attempted rape June 12, Wilson maintains that he never meant to rape or otherwise hurt Becky Rasnick--he just panicked when she began screaming.

According to a pre-sentencing report by the Ventura County probation department, Wilson, an only child, was sexually abused by a male baby-sitter when he was 4 or 5 and had been obsessed with sex ever since. In the past two years he developed a habit of driving around and staring at women--”a Peeping Tom on wheels,” he has said.

As Wilson described his childhood in court records, his father, a meat cutter, was an alcoholic who lived with the family intermittently and abused his mother. He recalled that his mother threatened to abandon him whenever he wet his bed and that she thought that “everyone was too dirty or bad.”

A high school dropout, Wilson obtained a high school equivalency degree in 1987. He worked sporadically at menial, low-paying jobs.

“He has very low self-esteem, a history of rejection and no friends,” says a county report.

As Wilson put it in his statement to the court: “I found masturbating to be the best thing in my life.”

Attorney Believes Him

Wilson declined to be interviewed. Farley, his lawyer, said Wilson feared being portrayed “as some kind of monster.” Farley said he believes Wilson’s version of the attack.

“I know what they think,” Farley said of the Rasnicks. “They think Ray is going to be roaming around looking for victims. I don’t believe that to be the case.”

Two psychologists--one hired by Wilson and one by the county--concluded that Wilson is a deeply troubled voyeur but no rapist. Prison wouldn’t change his behavior, but he could benefit from long-term therapy, they told county probation officials. Probation officers noted that Wilson had no criminal record.

On Aug. 10, Ventura Superior Court Judge Charles McGrath sentenced Wilson to five years probation, although the prosecutor had asked for a prison term of up to six years. McGrath ordered Wilson to undergo therapy as a condition of probation, to register with state authorities as a sex offender and to serve a year in the Ventura County Jail. Farley said Wilson should be free by April.

The Rasnicks say they are outraged by the short sentence. “When she came home, I could count the fingernail marks on her neck,” Ben Rasnick said. “There’s no innocence in that. His intentions were bold, whatever they were.”

$20,000 Bail

He said he was angry that Wilson’s lottery winnings enabled him to hire an expensive defense attorney and a psychiatrist. Wilson was able to meet bail set at $20,000 and, to the Rasnicks’ dismay, began working at a Carl’s Jr. in Ventura, where they took their sons every Saturday afternoon.

In March, while out on bail, Wilson bought a house for $605,000 in Tarzana, commuting to the Ventura job. Meanwhile, Becky Rasnick says she was having nightmares and panic attacks in the wake of her assault.

The Rasnicks said they deserve the money to offset the cost of Becky’s ongoing therapy and her lost earnings as a church teacher. But they said they would use most of the money to fight what they believe are moral ills.

A verdict that gave all of Wilson’s money to the Rasnicks “could totally wipe out everything Ray has, leaving him broke” and unable to pay for the therapy he needs, Farley said.

“I feel sorry for them both,” Farley said of Rasnick and Wilson. “They both have their burdens to tote around.”