Man Guilty of Raping Daughter in 1962 : Molestation: Sunland woman reported the abuses in January. The father also admits to assaulting a niece in 1958.

In an unusual case that could not have been prosecuted in California, the father of a 38-year-old Sunland woman has been convicted in Wyoming of raping his daughter and niece more than 25 years ago.

Prompted by psychological counseling, Lorretta Woodbury contacted Wyoming authorities in January and asked them to prosecute her father, Lloyd Calvin Woodbury, for sexually molesting her and a cousin in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

As a result of the woman’s efforts, Lloyd Woodbury was charged in August with five felony sexual abuse counts in connection with assaults on Woodbury, his niece and a third girl--also a niece--whose alleged molestation came to light after Wyoming authorities began an investigation.

Wyoming authorities believe the case is one of the oldest non-murder cases in that state and probably in the nation. Filing the case was possible because Wyoming, unlike most other states, has no statute of limitations on criminal cases, officials said.

In California, the statute of limitations ranges from 2 to 6 years for all crimes except murder, which has no time limit, authorities said.

Now 73 and living in Ingram, Tex., Lloyd Woodbury pleaded guilty Nov. 28 in Carbon County, Wyo., to having raped his then-10-year-old daughter in the summer of 1962 and his then-13-year-old niece in the summer of 1958.

As part of a plea bargain, prosecutors dropped additional charges that Woodbury took indecent liberties with an 8-year-old niece in 1958, and counts involving assaults on his daughter in 1959 and 1965.

Wyoming 2nd Judicial District Court Judge Larry Lehman sentenced Woodbury, a retired taxidermist and bronze sculptor, to five years of probation and ordered him to undergo counseling and avoid contact with the victims. Woodbury also must avoid being around children unless another adult is present, said Carbon County Prosecuting Atty. Kurt Kelly.

The assaults occurred in Rawlins, a city of 8,000 in south-central Wyoming, where the family lived at the time, said Lorretta Woodbury, a free-lance commercial artist.

Woodbury said psychological counseling she received at the Valley Trauma Center at Cal State Northridge made her decide to try to have her father prosecuted so many years after the fact.

“I never dreamed for five minutes that they would do anything with it,” she said in a telephone interview. “Basically, what I was doing was venting. Instead of keeping all this stuff to myself and letting myself be a victim, I was starting to say, ‘I am not going to keep quiet anymore.’ ”

Kelly initially told Woodbury that it would be practically impossible to find enough evidence to prosecute so old a case. Undeterred, Woodbury provided more details, persuading Kelly to turn the case over to the Carbon County Sheriff’s Department.

Although decades had passed, investigators emerged with what Kelly considered to be strong evidence: All three victims independently told similar stories, corroborating each other.

Lloyd Woodbury, interviewed by phone from Texas, said he waived extradition and pleaded guilty to the charges “to keep from going to court.” He denied raping his daughter or his nieces.

“I had relations with one of the friends but there was no rape to it. Just sexual relations,” said Woodbury.

Born in Casper, Wyo., to parents who soon divorced, Lorretta Woodbury lived with her mother and on a welfare ranch before being sent to live with her father and stepmother at age 7.

According to Woodbury, the abuse started almost immediately. On her 10th birthday, Woodbury said, she remembers her father assaulting her in his truck parked outside town and then taking her home to have birthday cake.

Her father threatened to send her to reform school if she told anyone, she said. The abuse continued seven years, she said.

It ended after Woodbury’s step-sister came to visit, she said. Woodbury wrote a note to her mother, who had remarried, detailing the sexual abuse, sewing it into her sister’s coat, she recalled.

Social workers removed the then-14-year-old girl from home a few weeks later but her father was never prosecuted. Authorities in Wyoming said law enforcement officials were reluctant 30 years ago to prosecute such cases.