Paroled Sex Offender Arrested in Rapes of 3 Youths

A paroled sex offender accused of raping three schoolchildren and terrorizing a Pacoima neighborhood was arrested Wednesday by Inglewood police, who said he is a suspect in a recent sex assault on a girl there.

Robert Lee Donaldson, 34, who was paroled from prison in February after a 1982 conviction of raping a child, was apparently stalking a girl near a school when police arrested him early Wednesday, according to Los Angeles Police Department detectives and a parole official.

The Pacoima attacks, which began Aug. 30, led parents to band together to escort their children to schoolyards.

“We’re relieved,” said Kathy O’Driscoll, assistant principal of Hillery T. Broadous Elementary School, which two of the victims attended. But parents and children probably won’t let down their guard, she said.

“In this day and age, it’s better to keep walking with them and caution them to stick together,” O’Driscoll said. “It’s a terrible lesson.”

Inglewood detectives are investigating Donaldson in connection with one sexual assault and an attempted kidnaping. The victims were girls, ages 9 and 16, police said. The attacks occurred Oct. 11 and Oct. 18 within three blocks of each other, authorities said.

The two police departments had been in contact for about two weeks, and they tracked Donaldson to Inglewood through a telephone call he made to Pacoima, said Detective Diane Webb of the LAPD Foothill Division, which has been seeking Donaldson in the Pacoima attacks.

Donaldson is already accused in a 19-count felony warrant of raping an 11-year-old boy and two girls, 11 and 16, as they walked to school near Van Nuys and Glenoaks Boulevards in August and September.

Donaldson earlier was accused of the rape or attempted rape of four children within half a mile of that intersection in 1982. He pleaded guilty to one of those assaults and was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Donaldson’s parole, after serving 9 1/2 years, was termed “a flaw in the system” by Jerome DiMaggio, the state’s regional parole administrator for northern Los Angeles County.

Under the state’s determinate sentencing laws, Donaldson earned time off for good behavior and was paroled automatically in June, 1991, without review.

Donaldson violated parole and was sent back for another year in February, 1992. This March, a month after his re-release, he disappeared from a Downtown men’s shelter, violating parole and the sex offender registration law. Times staff writers Timothy Williams and Michelle Fuetsch contributed to this story.