Lottery Winner’s Victim Wants His Millions

The last year was a turning point in the lives Becky Rasnick and Raymond Wilson.

Wilson, a 20-year-old fast-food worker from West Los Angeles, 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 is that Wilson has admitted that he was Rasnick’s attacker.

Now Rasnick and Wilson are confronting each other. Rasnick and her husband Ben have sued to deprive Wilson, who was convicted of the attack, of his lottery prize. If they win, the Rasnicks could receive $234,400 a year from Wilson’s winnings, which they say they would use to fight abortion and pornography.

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

For Wilson, who says he became a voyeur after being sexually molested as a boy, the Rasnicks’ suit could jeopardize 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.

Don’t Keep Track of Winners

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

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

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

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

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

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, three years older, who grew up in the same Ventura neighborhood.

Becky married Ben at the age of 19 in a ceremony performed by her Uncle John. She left college, and two years later, at the age of 21, became a mother. Today, she and Ben live with their two sons, Nathan, 6, and Dustin, 4, in a large, New England-style home 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.

Left for a Run

On the Saturday that Becky was attacked, her husband, an electrical engineer, was mowing the lawn. She started on her regular 5- to 7-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 said, she noticed Wilson standing by his truck but she 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 the man was masturbating.

According to court records, Wilson accosted Rasnick as she ran into the middle of the road and called for help. 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 car 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.

Trace License Number

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

Although he pleaded guilty to attempted rape on 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-sentence 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 years old and had been obsessed with sex ever since. Over the last two years, he developed a habit of driving around and staring at women--”a peeping Tom on wheels,” as he called himself.

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

A high school dropout, Wilson obtained a high school equivalency diploma in 1987. He worked sporadically at menial, low-paid jobs. A county report said he had “very low self-esteem, a history of rejection and no friends.”

In his statement to the court, Wilson said, “I found masturbating to be the best thing in my life.”

Wilson declined to be interviewed. Farley, his lawyer, said he 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 would not change his behavior, but he could benefit from long-term therapy, the psychologists told 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 on the case had asked for a prison term of up to six years. He ordered Wilson to get therapy as a condition of probation, to register with the state as a sex offender and to serve one year in the Ventura County Jail. Farley said Wilson should be free by next April.

‘Intentions Were Bold’

The Rasnicks said 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.”

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

In March, while out on bail, Wilson bought a house in Tarzana for $605,000. Meanwhile, Becky Rasnick said 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 continuing therapy,but they said they would use most of the money to fight for what they believe are moral ills.

A verdict that gives 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.”