Long Beach Police Sergeant Charged in 1985 Rape Case : Crime: Prosecutors reinstate charges 10 days before deadline. The officer has already been accused in a more recent, similar incident.

A Long Beach police sergeant already in jail awaiting trial on charges of attempted rape was charged Monday with raping another woman nearly six years ago.

Sgt. Robert L. Ballew, handcuffed and wearing a blue Los Angeles County Jail uniform, pleaded not guilty in San Pedro Municipal Court to raping a woman Oct. 11, 1985.

It was the second time that Ballew pleaded not guilty to assaulting the then 20-year-old Navy woman. In 1986, a judge dismissed rape charges at the request of prosecutors after the alleged victim gave conflicting testimony during a preliminary hearing.

Prosecutors had six years to reinstate charges against Ballew before the statute of limitations ran out and reopened the case just 10 days before the deadline to refile.

“We just barely caught it in time,” said James Cosper, deputy district attorney in Long Beach.

Los Angeles Police Detective Julie Nelson of the Harbor Division’s sex crime unit began looking for the woman in the 1985 case after Ballew was arrested Sept. 15 for kidnaping, assault with a deadly weapon and the attempted rape of a 30-year-old San Pedro woman.

John Barnett, Ballew’s attorney, said neither of the women had a credible story.

Nelson found the alleged victim in the 1985 case living in another state. The woman plans to return to California for the trial, police said. “She’ll go ahead now that she knows she’s not the only one,” said Detective Robert Espinoza.

Nelson, who was also the detective in the earlier case, said the former Navy woman “was really traumatized” by the incident and was “definitely badgered” by the defense attorney while on the stand. The woman “just wanted to forget it,” Nelson said.

During a preliminary hearing May 22, 1986, the woman made a number of inconsistent statements, according to a court transcript of the hearing. But Nelson noted that most of the inconsistencies were minor details, such as whether she had drunk a soft drink.

“It’s not unusual in a rape case for there to be a lot of inconsistencies,” Nelson said.

At the time, the woman told police that she met Ballew at a downtown Long Beach restaurant. He offered to take her to the Naval Station but instead pulled off into a secluded area and attacked her. Ballew drove her to the station afterward, she said.

Ballew’s defense attorney alleged that the woman was a prostitute.

In the more recent case, the woman told police that she asked Ballew, whom she had just met, for a ride to her mother’s home. Instead, she told police, he drove to a secluded spot and attacked her. Police, responding to a call about a woman screaming, found the woman and Ballew inside his van. The woman had a golf ball-sized bump on her head, a bloody elbow and scrapes on her right knee, according to police. She told police she could not remember if she was raped.

Ballew, a 16-year-veteran of the Long Beach Police Department, is in custody in lieu of a $175,000 bond and has been suspended from his job without pay.

The 1985 case “lacked validity when they dismissed it six years ago, and it still does,” Barnett said.

As for the more recent rape allegation, Barnett noted that the woman could not tell police that Ballew raped her. “She doesn’t recall anything. She can’t say that she was raped. She can’t say that she was beaten.”

As for her screams, Barnett attributed them to her use of the drug PCP, which police confirmed she had been using that night. Screaming is not unusual, he said, “for somebody who was whacked out on PCP.”

“You have two cases,” Barnett said, “one that the prosecutor didn’t believe and one that the alleged victim can’t remember.”