Convicted Molester Freed on Parole : Crime: Kyle Hochstraser reports to officer in Palmdale. Victim says she is ‘sentenced to lifetime of nightmares.’

Kyle Hochstraser, known as Richard Streate when he entered the state prison in Tehachapi a year and a half ago, was released Wednesday and immediately reported to his parole officer in Palmdale, the same Antelope Valley city where he molested his goddaughter in 1991.

Meanwhile, Desiray Bartak, the 14-year-old victim, said in Los Angeles that it doesn’t matter what name he uses; she said she knows him as the predator who abused her trust to steal her innocence.

He went to prison, but he’s the one who got off easy, she said during a news conference at her lawyer’s Wilshire Boulevard office.

“Richard Streate has served his time, but I am sentenced to a lifetime of nightmares he caused me when he murdered my childhood,” Desiray said. In the nightmares, he appears in a blond wig and red lipstick, and she is always running from him, she added.

She told reporters she wants the world to know how he crept into her bed when she was 10, making her “perform sexual acts that only a husband and wife would do.” If the world knows her story, she said, maybe he won’t be able to molest another child.

And, she said, the criminal justice system let her down.

“I’m very angry at the justice system, that they let him out,” she said. “I’m mad at the judge for not giving him the maximum sentence.”

Although Hochstraser’s release didn’t trigger any massive outcry in the Antelope Valley on Wednesday, some attorneys and public officials seized the opportunity to call for laws toughening sentences for child molesters, and making them ineligible for early release.

“For child molesters, there should be no such thing as a mechanism for early release,” said Palmdale Councilman Terence Judge, who works as a sheriff’s deputy. “They should be required to serve each and every day of their sentence as far as I’m concerned.”

Attorney Gloria Allred, who represents Desiray, called for laws preventing sex offenders from changing their names, as Streate/Hochstraser did. And she urged stiffer sentences for convicted child molesters.

“It’s obscene that often criminals will serve a longer term in prison for writing a bad check than they will for molesting a child,” she said.

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When he was charged in June, 1992, Hochstraser could have faced three molestation counts involving Desiray and another child. He was charged with two, one of which was dismissed when he pleaded guilty to a single count of performing a lewd act on a child.

Although Desiray, her mother, Wayanne Kruger, and attorney Allred pleaded with Lancaster Superior Court Judge Haig Kehiayan to impose the maximum eight-year sentence, he sentenced the defendant in 1993 to the minimum, three-year sentence.

Prison work and good-behavior credits further reduced his sentence by half.

But Desiray, in her own way, struck back. In January she won a $2-million verdict in an unprecedented lawsuit against her molester.

Although it is now common for victims of sexual abuse to sue their abusers, Desiray’s case was believed to be the first where a child victim sued and prevailed. So far, the case hasn’t brought her a dime, but it has earned her national recognition as a symbol for children’s rights.

Desiray seemed so much older than other teen-agers as she spoke at the news conference in Allred’s office. She was poised, deliberate and gravely serious.

“I had to grow up,” she said. “I had to become an adult.”

Desiray and her mother have moved to Northern California, and have obtained a restraining order to keep Hochstraser from coming within 35 miles of them.

But the 30-year-old Hochstraser, who has claimed he too was sexually abused as a child, seems more interested in resuming his life in Palmdale. He has found a job, moved in with a relative “in a remote location,” and will be closely monitored, state parole officials said.

“We’re giving him the most intensive supervision that we provide,” said Jerry Di Maggio, a regional parole administrator. “His parole officer will check with him more than twice a month at his residence or place of employment. He’ll be checking to find out how he’s doing and where he’s living.”

He has two weeks to register as a sex offender at the Antelope Valley Sheriff’s Station. Neighbors with children will be notified about his record. And, he will not be living with his wife and his own children because the terms of his parole forbid contact with minors.

Di Maggio also said Hochstraser will be required to attend an outpatient clinic for parolees, meeting weekly with a psychiatrist. He will be barred from places where minors congregate. “If we catch him around a school, he will go to jail,” Di Maggio said.

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On Wednesday, just knowing Hochstraser was free was enough to jangle Desiray’s nerves.

“I’m scared,” she told reporters.

“It was very hard for me to get to sleep last night, knowing he’s getting out today. I felt as though I had my life back. Now, I’m back in the same predicament I was in two years ago.”

She was first molested during the July 4 weekend in 1990, when she was staying with her godfather for the weekend. A little more than a year later, in August, 1991, it happened again. She says she bottled up her secret for a while, but she couldn’t escape it.

“I went into a depression,” she said. “I dressed in black all the time and I cut off all my hair, so I wouldn’t be attractive. I ate until 2 a.m. I had horrific nightmares and thoughts of suicide. I was institutionalized and that’s when I got help. I’d blocked it in my head.”

Filing charges wasn’t easy. “When I went public, I lost half my relatives.” She now is estranged from her father, a life-long friend of Hochstraser, and an aunt and uncle.

But it’s time, she says, for the criminal justice system and society to discard old-fashioned ideas and denial about child abuse.

“Back in the ‘50s and ‘60s nobody believed it was going on, but it was. This is the ‘90s. It’s time for people to wake up.”