‘So Many Victims’ : After Two Decades, Molester Is Finally Brought to Justice

For more than two decades, Long Beach resident Robert William Shewan molested little girls.

His deviant behavior was known or suspected by some parents, fellow church members, his ex-wives, the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services, a court-appointed child investigator and a judge, according to court documents, police and people who knew Shewan.

Yet, it wasn’t until recently that the 50-year-old businessman was finally caught and convicted of molesting a 4-year-old.

“I can’t think of any other case I’ve done where I found so many victims or a case where I’ve gone back and found someone who got away with this for so long,” said Lianne Osendorf, the Long Beach detective who pieced together a case against Shewan.

The number of girls he molested, some as young as 2, is unclear. According to a sentencing report by a court-appointed psychologist and therapist, Shewan admitted molesting 20 girls since the 1960s. Police, prosecutors and a judge said they suspect the number is greater.

In January, 1992, Shewan was arrested after he was caught molesting a 4-year-old girl who was playing in her front yard. Osendorf checked into his past and found at least eight women who said they had been molested as girls.

Last summer, a jury found Shewan guilty of a lewd act upon a child, and on Jan. 20, a Compton Superior Court judge handed him the maximum sentence--a $10,000 fine and eight years in state prison.

“Mr. Shewan, this is your punishment,” Judge Richard P. Kalustian said. “There’s been at least one young woman a year who’s been molested. . . . You’ve done something to these lives they will never be able to recapture.”

Shewan, in a brief interview at Los Angeles County Jail recently, said talking would hurt his reputation and not help his situation. As he awaited transfer to state prison, he said that those who accuse him are forgetting “the good things I’ve done in my life.”

Asked about the judge’s comments that he molested a great number of children, Shewan said the number was exaggerated, but he would not elaborate.

“I was found guilty and there’s nothing more I can say,” he said.

Shewan grew up in Long Beach, graduated from Millikan High and Cal State Long Beach and was the vice president of a local freight company. He sang in his church choir. Yet this upstanding member of the community had a dark side.

Some of his closest family members said their earliest memories are of Shewan fondling them. Young women who lived in Shewan’s Los Altos neighborhood and played with his children said they were victims. So did daughters of fellow church members, who trusted Shewan to baby-sit and give piano lessons to their children.

In the cases uncovered by Osendorf, the six-year statute of limitations has expired and prosecutors cannot file additional charges against Shewan--frustrating authorities who said he should have been stopped long ago.

“This case points out the shortcomings of the justice system when it comes to molestation victims,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Scott Carbaugh said. “This person could have gotten many more years in prison had responsible persons come forward with this.”

The first time Shewan was charged with molesting a child was in early 1992, after he stalked a little girl in a nearby neighborhood.

On Dec. 20, 1991, a man later identified as Shewan was chased by neighbors who saw him putting his hand up a 4-year-old girl’s skirt. On Jan. 7, 1992, the girl’s mother saw the same man in the neighborhood, but he fled in a car, Osendorf said. Less than two weeks later, he was back again, and the child’s mother followed his car and wrote down the license plate number, which was traced to Shewan, Osendorf said. He was arrested later in the month.

While discussing the case with her colleagues, Osendorf learned that Shewan had been charged with indecent exposure in a separate case Feb. 1, 1992, shortly after the molestation arrest. Later, he was convicted and sentenced to 90 days in jail for exposing himself to two 8-year-old girls at Stearns Park.

Meanwhile, Osendorf began calling Shewan’s relatives, and each interview led to more women who said they had been molested by him as children. One woman said Shewan first molested her 26 years ago.

“They said, ‘We tried to report and nobody ever did anything.’ He got away with this for 26 years,” Osendorf said.

Ten or 20 years ago, it was much more difficult to bring such cases to trial, authorities say.

“The law has changed as written and as applied,” said UCLA law professor Robert Goldstein. “It is easier to qualify children as witnesses. It’s easier to protect them when they testify. It’s easier to accept their out-of-court statements.”

But what is more important is the change in attitudes, he said. “There is a willingness to take allegations seriously,” said Goldstein, who specializes in children and the law.

In Shewan’s case, many of the victims said they told an adult, but many of the victims’ families failed to go to authorities.

Osendorf attributed the hesitancy to prevailing attitudes at the time.

“You have to look at the time period. In the ‘70s and early ‘80s, if you tried to file anything, you had a hell of a time,” Osendorf said. “It just wasn’t acceptable to talk about it.”

Some of the victims’ families also believed Shewan when he said he would get help and change his behavior, authorities said.

According to court records, Shewan was in therapy in 1975, 1982-83, 1984-85 and in 1990. Kirt Hopson, his attorney, unsuccessfully argued at Shewan’s sentencing that society would be better served if his client were put in counseling rather than prison.

“I can’t make any excuses for the behavior of my client,” Hopson told the judge. “(But) I don’t feel it’s proper for Mr. Shewan to get eight years.”

Judge Kalustian said it is likely that Shewan will serve half his term. Shewan has already been credited with nearly a year for time served since his conviction last summer and time off for good behavior.

According to a pre-sentencing diagnostic study prepared by psychologist Rufia R. Amiri of the Department of Corrections, Shewan’s behavior “is not controllable and he poses serious risk to the children in the community.”

Shewan “acknowledged his pedophilia and admitted to (having) molested 20 girls over the years,” Amiri wrote. Shewan said his pedophilia “stems from his low self-esteem and his sense of inadequacy and insecurity with women,” the psychologist wrote.

Department of Corrections counselor William Martin, who also interviewed Shewan, wrote in a report to the court that Shewan “admitted molesting young girls from the 1960s to the present.”

“Relationships with females his own age are too stressful and demanding,” Martin wrote. “Although he appears to have some insight into his behavior, he still continues to molest young girls with little or no remorse.”

When Shewan and his first wife divorced in 1980, a court-appointed investigator recommended that custody of the couple’s two children be granted to the mother and that Shewan’s visits be restricted to daylight hours because of allegations that he molested children.

Shewan’s second ex-wife said she also informed authorities that Shewan molested children. She said she was interviewed in the mid-1980s by officials from the Department of Children’s Services and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. They had been contacted by a psychologist who said Shewan admitted molesting little girls.

But instead of going after Shewan, the Department of Children’s Services attempted to remove his three stepchildren from the home he had left, his second ex-wife said. “They were trying to take away my children,” she said. “They said I should have known he was doing this.” Eventually, however, the children were allowed to remain with their mother.

Shewan admitted to Children’s Services worker Tonya R. Noil in 1985 that he exposed himself to two girls and fondled one of them, according to Department of Children’s Services documents.

“Further, investigation revealed a lengthy history of Mr. Shewan’s reported sexual activities with children, dating back to approximately 1968 so far,” Children’s Services investigator Colleen Moes wrote in a 1986 report. “Witnesses who were molested at approximately the ages of 2 years to 10 years of age and who are now adults are willing to testify regarding their molestations by Mr. Shewan.”

Carol Walker, supervisor of the department’s child sexual abuse program, said she could not comment on a specific case because such information is confidential. In general, Walker said, the department investigates all allegations of sexual abuse and reports them to the appropriate law enforcement agency. If children are found to be in a dangerous environment, they are removed from the home, she said.

Walker said the focus of the Department of Children’s Services is to protect children, not to prosecute child molesters.

“That’s up to the criminal justice system. We don’t have the power to put people in jail,” she said.

During her investigation, Long Beach Police Detective Osendorf said she found no records at either her department or the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department that would indicate the agencies had been informed or that Shewan had been investigated previously.

Some of the women whose lives were affected by Shewan blamed authorities for not taking a more aggressive role and stopping Shewan earlier.

“They knew about this in 1985 and they chose not to do anything about it,” said Shewan’s second wife. “The whole system was screwed up. The Department of Children’s Services did nothing.”

A Long Beach resident, now in her 20s, told Osendorf that Shewan exposed himself to her and frequently molested her in 1975 when she went to his house to play with his stepdaughter. She broke down in tears during the sentencing and asked the prosecutor to finish reading her statement to the judge.

“Now at least there will be four years, possibly eight years, when he won’t molest children,” she said after the sentencing.

An adult niece testified at Shewan’s sentencing that he molested her from the time she was 3 until she was 8. “My earliest memories are of Bob molesting me in the worst possible way,” she said.

Often, the abuse occurred during holidays or family reunions, she told police. Once, he cornered her in the back yard, where he probed her body with his fingers and made her touch him, she said.

She said she was interviewed by a social worker from the Department of Children’s Services in 1985, when they were investigating the allegations lodged by Shewan’s psychologist.

“I told (the social worker) about what happened to me and about all the girls I knew, and I got her their phone numbers,” the niece said in an interview. “I even did a deposition for them, but nothing happened.

“Nobody was looking out for us until Detective Lianne Osendorf,” the niece said.

Osendorf said she could not entirely explain why Shewan was able to avoid arrest each time allegations about his sexual behavior with little girls came to light. In many cases, she said, families feared that their children would suffer even more and they refused to push for prosecution. In other cases, it’s unclear why nothing was done, she said.

Many of the victims said they told their families or others about the molestations. The friend of Shewan’s stepdaughter, for example, said she told her parents when she was 4 years old. Her mother remembers the day clearly.

They were in the kitchen when the little girl talked for the first time about how Shewan had touched her. Her mother said she immediately called her husband at work and, together, they confronted Shewan and his wife.

The Shewans “came over to our house, sat on our sofa, and he just cried and cried and begged us not to prosecute. He (said) he was going to get help,” the woman said. “He seemed to be so pathetic. My husband’s first instinct was to beat him up, but he was so pathetic.”

A friend who was a police officer advised the couple against prosecuting Shewan, she said. The court case would be too traumatic for a 4-year-old, he told them. So they took their daughter to counseling and moved out of the neighborhood.

“If I had realized (my daughter) would remember this for the rest of her life like she did, I would have put her through (a trial),” the mother said.

That a respected member of the community could molest little girls was simply unbelievable to many who knew Shewan.

Yet, rumors about Shewan’s behavior had circulated at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Long Beach for years, according to Leonora Holder, who said she left the church 11 years ago because her written complaints about Shewan were ignored.

Holder had been dating Shewan for about six months when she confronted him in 1980 and he admitted he preferred sexual contact with children.

“I looked him in the eye and said: ‘You don’t like grown-up ladies very much, do you?’ And he said: ‘No, I like little girls, especially if they can’t talk yet.’ ”

Holder, a 47-year-old writer and a retired literature professor from Rio Hondo College in Whittier, said she wrote to a bishop, who contacted church officials. Nothing came of it, however.

Holder said the bishop, who has since died, told her the church had no authority in the matter and urged her to go to the police. But when she called law enforcement agencies or child abuse centers to report that Shewan said he molested young girls, Holder said she was told they could do nothing about it “until he’s caught.”

Osendorf said that today it is easier to prosecute a child molestation case compared to a decade ago.

In the only molestation case involving Shewan to reach a courtroom, for example, the 4-year-old did not have to testify. Instead, her mother and neighbors identified Shewan as the molester. A close family member also testified that Shewan had molested her when she was a child.

The case demonstrates that attitudes about child molestation--once a forbidden topic--are finally changing.

“It’s the ultimate taboo,” said Kathy McCarrell, program director of the county Child Sexual Abuse Crisis Center. “In the last five years, we’ve gotten better. We have come a long way, but we’re a long way from where we need to be.”

Osendorf said she urges parents to report such crimes. Even when a case is difficult to prove, “the point is you try.”

Victims and their families must be willing to do something about molestation, said the mother of one of Shewan’s victims.

“It’s so sad that of all these people, none of us prosecuted and filed a complaint. Was it this man’s demeanor? He was so meek and he brought on the tears. . . . He made us feel so sorry for him.” The intense fear of what would happen to their daughter also affected the couple’s decision not to call the police.

The woman said that Shewan’s trial stirred feelings of guilt. Although her daughter testified at the sentencing, the woman said she could not bear to go.

“I couldn’t go to court and see the other victims there and think, ‘My God, if I had called the police, they would have thrown him in jail and there may not have been these victims.’ ”

When Molestation Is Suspected

Signs that a child has been molested include nightmares, changes in behavior and an unusual reaction to certain people, a particular baby-sitter or relative, for example.

If molestation is suspected, the parent should calmly question and reassure the youngster, since molesters often tell them their parents will go away or won’t love them if they tell.

Anyone who suspects that a child may have been molested should contact a law enforcement agency or the Los Angeles County child abuse hot line, which accepts anonymous calls, at (800) 540-4000.