Rape Suspect Says He Is Being ‘Railroaded’ : Crime: In jailhouse interview, convicted sex offender denies having assaulted a woman at gunpoint.

A convicted serial rapist accused of sexually assaulting a woman at gunpoint insisted on Thursday that he is innocent and claimed that he is being “railroaded” by authorities because of his status as a registered sex offender.

“I’m being assassinated again,” said Paul William Jensen, 48, during a 1 1/2-hour interview in the Orange County Jail, where he is being held without bond. “I want you to write an article with a big headline that says, ‘Mistake!’ ”

In sharp contrast to the picture Jensen painted of himself, parole officials, prosecutors and his former defense attorney portrayed him as a man whose inability to take no for an answer was a gold mine for his career as a salesman, but was devastating for his victims.

“Persistence to a point is a virtue,” said Jensen’s former defense attorney, Alvin Pierson III. “Beyond that, it is a crime. He doesn’t abuse women. He abuses everyone, irregardless of the sex.”

Jensen, who last month was discharged from parole on a 1985 conviction involving the “date rapes” of four Newport Beach women, was arrested Monday. He was being held in Orange County Jail on charges of forcible rape, kidnaping, forced oral copulation, sexual battery and restraint, assault with a firearm and possession of a firearm, according to Sheriff’s Department spokesman Lt. Richard J. Olson.

Authorities suspect he may be involved in other rapes but have yet to find evidence linking him to other crimes.

“This whole thing is just a sad situation,” said Jensen, who will be arraigned Wednesday.

Municipal Judge Pamela L. Iles refused to grant bail Wednesday, saying that he may pose a risk to the victim, who told police her attacker threatened to kill her or her children if she told anyone about the crime.

The victim, a 35-year-old Mission Viejo woman, said that when she entered her van after shopping at the Laguna Hills Mall, a man she later identified as Jensen put a gun to her head and ordered her to a deserted section of the parking lot. There he undressed her and himself and raped her while her hands were bound, she said.

Jensen said his arrest was the result of mistaken identity, claiming the rape victim erred when she picked him out of a photo lineup on June 5.

“Lord knows why she picked me,” Jensen said as he sat behind a glass pane that overlooked the busy cellblock. His dark blue eyes were slightly bloodshot and his face was unshaven. He was wearing bright orange coveralls.

“I didn’t do it,” he said. “I don’t even know who she is.”

In the interview, Jensen claimed he was at home during the rape, watching his parole officer, Susan Simpson, and a group of Sheriff’s Department drug investigators search his home for three hours.

“I’m hoping I can be out of here later today,” Jensen said.

But parole administrator John Dowling said that a check of records shows that the search involving Jensen’s parole officer was in fact conducted on Jan. 15.

In 1985, Jensen was convicted of sexually assaulting four women. Those convictions were later overturned by an appellate court, but Jensen later pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a single victim. He served three years behind bars after being sentenced to six years in prison. But on Thursday, he contended that he was innocent.

“They said I did it; I said I didn’t,” Jensen said. “I didn’t do anything to them (the four women). We just enjoyed sex together. They didn’t have to stay. They weren’t forced into anything.”

Jensen met the women either at Newport Beach bars or when they answered ads he placed for a roommate. After wining and dining them, he sexually assaulted them, jurors concluded.

Since his 1988 release from the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco, Jensen, once a successful computer salesman with a late-model Mercedes-Benz and a home in Newport Beach, said he has been unable to pursue his former career. He said the conviction left him tainted, as does the requirement that he must register with the Sheriff’s Department as a sex offender. He most recently worked for a collection agency, selling services to a variety of companies.

Jensen said he believes prosecutions for “date rape”--of which his case was one of the earliest examples in Orange County--are too frequent. “It’s gotten to the point of ridiculous,” Jensen said. “They got the girls all confused. The guy wants romance and then finds himself in deep Bandini.”

Parole administrator Dowling and others who knew him in the prior case said that Jensen’s persistent denial of his crimes has made it difficult for him to adjust to normal society.

“He was seen as (making) a poor adjustment because he continued to deny any of the offenses,” Dowling said, adding that he received continual therapy during his parole, which expired automatically on May 7.

Jensen’s desire to control every aspect of the defense made the trial unbearable, according to Pierson, the defense attorney. After the conviction, “we had an emotional parting of the ways,” Pierson said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeffrey Robinson, who prosecuted the 1985 case, said that Jensen was an unusually persistent man who was “very bright and smart” but was also “almost immature” and “self-centered.” He pressed for therapy at the time but said he believed that prison was the right place for Jensen.

“It was clear that there was some underlying emotional problem, not that other rapists don’t have them, but he was different,” Robinson recalled recently. “I can’t cite any case like that.”

Jury members who sat through the six-week trial also had doubts about Jensen’s mental health.

“It is our strong feeling that Mr. Jensen does indeed need some type of psychological help,” wrote juror R. W. Patterson in a letter to Superior Court Judge David O. Carter.

But Thursday, Jensen insisted that he suffers no mental problem, despite the observations of county psychologists and others. He said that he is merely a “red-blooded” man who enjoys going out with women. He said that officials who claim to want him under psychological therapy are trying to lay the blame for the rape on him because it is convenient to do so.

“These guys could care less about my well-being or how I feel,” Jensen said.