Family, Friends Don’t Believe Man Is Rapist : Ojai Valley: Community hopes arrest of Jason Edward Hawthorne, 21, ends a series of attacks. But acquaintances call him the victim of a ‘witch hunt.’

Laden with worry for the past 10 months, residents of the Ojai Valley expressed relief Sunday that a suspect had been captured in connection with a series of rapes and attempted rapes that terrorized the community over much of last year.

But friends and relatives of Jason Edward Hawthorne said the 21-year-old suspect is the victim of a “witch hunt” that pressured investigators into making an arrest in the case.

“This is really upsetting to me,” said his mother, Lana Hawthorne, a 21-year Oak View resident. “I know he didn’t do it. I have no doubt that he will be cleared. I believe in his innocence.”

Hawthorne grew up in Oak View but has lived in a rented garage apartment on Nye Road in Casitas Springs since June. His landlord, Charolette Ontiveros, has known the suspect since he was a boy.

“I think he is the victim of a Sheriff’s Department witch hunt,” Ontiveros said. “He is not the Ojai rapist.”

An Oxnard print shop manager, Hawthorne is the product of local schools, having attended Arnaz School in Oak View, De Anza Middle School in Ventura and then Ventura High School.

The weekend arrest surprised at least one of Hawthorne’s former teachers.

“It comes as a total shock to me,” said Patricia Post, a visual arts teacher at Ventura High School who remembers Hawthorne as a quiet student and a hard worker.

“It’s been a while since he was a student of mine,” the 25-year educator said. “He was a fine young man. It’s totally unexpected. He just seemed like an everyday kid. He was a good student, sincere.”

Ontiveros said that Hawthorne’s arrest had upset friends, family and his girlfriend.

Ventura County sheriff’s deputies arrested Hawthorne late Saturday as the suspect in a string of rapes and attempted rapes that occurred in the rustic valley over a six-month period last year.

Hawthorne was asked by investigators to participate in a lineup early Saturday but was released within hours, Ontiveros said. Later that night, deputies arrested him.

Sheriff’s Department investigators said they had “an overwhelming amount of evidence” against Hawthorne.

“It’s about time,” said Tena Gay French, a private security guard who lives on Pueblo Avenue in Meiners Oaks, where the first attack occurred in the early hours of March 13. “It’s scary as hell to think the community is vulnerable to some idiot out there.”

Hawthorne, who is being held at Ventura County Jail in lieu of $500,000 bail, declined to be interviewed Sunday. But he has had at least two visits from attorneys since his Saturday-night arrest, a jail commander said.

The suspect is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday in Ventura County Municipal Court on charges of rape, attempted rape, burglary and oral copulation. He is being housed in a special area at the Ventura County Jail for his own safety, Sheriff’s Sgt. Dee Bryce said.

On Sunday, Hawthorne’s blue pickup truck was parked on Nye Road, next door to his house, in front of the First Baptist Church of Casitas Springs. It is similar to one witnesses saw leaving the scene of some of the assaults.

A back-window placard on the Chevrolet truck reads: “I’d rather be killing fags.” The same message appears on a notebook on the truck’s dashboard.

Hawthorne is suspected of committing a series of attacks in the Ojai Valley between March and September of last year, including the brutal beating in April of a 61-year-old Ojai woman who fought off the sexual assault, sheriff’s investigators said.

He also is suspected in two attacks that occurred early on the morning of Sept. 2, when a man matching his description assaulted a 64-year-old woman on Taormina Lane in west Ojai. That victim escaped after about 45 minutes by climbing out a window and summoning help.

Hours later, a 54-year-old woman was attacked on El Jina Lane, a remote neighborhood east of Ojai.

The series of attacks left community members apprehensive and fearful.

Residents and merchants posted composite drawings of the suspect throughout the Ojai Valley, and at least 200 people--mostly women--gathered at a quickly organized town hall meeting, where sheriff’s officials detailed the case.

In following weeks, self-defense classes and community “speak-outs” were organized to keep people stay aware of the continuing attacks. Meanwhile, detectives scoured hundreds of department records for a match of a loose description of the suspect.

Investigators on Sunday said they tracked down Hawthorne--described as 6 feet, 2 inches tall, with auburn hair and weighing about 150 pounds--through a booking photograph taken following a previous arrest.

Details of that case were not available from sheriff’s officials Sunday. But Ontiveros said Hawthorne was arrested last year on a relatively trivial charge.

Merchants and community residents, many of whom have taken extra security precautions over the past year, said Sunday that they were relieved that a suspect in the rapes had been arrested.

“He attacked the woman two doors away from me,” Pueblo Avenue resident Thom Cowlishaw said of the suspect. “Everyone in the community here was pretty much on the lookout for him.”

Jeff Rains, co-manager at Rains department store in downtown Ojai, said his employees organized a safety program following the initial series of attacks.

“The ladies themselves decided they were not going to walk out one at a time,” he said. “They’d leave in groups of two or more.”

Stacey Roberts, a 16-year-old clerk at Ojai Ice Cream, said the attacks worried her parents because she often closed up the store by herself on late summer nights.

“My parents wanted me home earlier and they wanted to make sure where I was,” she said. “They didn’t want me to spend the night at a friend of mine’s because she lives in the neighborhood (where one of the assaults occurred).”

Hawthorne was a frequent customer at Casitas Springs Market, where he often bought 12-packs of beer and cigarettes, clerk David Kanji said.

“He’s a down-to-Earth guy,” Kanji said. “He didn’t seem like a rapist, let’s put it that way.”

McAndrew Road resident Marian Bateman, who lives in the neighborhood where the last attack took place, said she hopes the arrest puts an end to months of community fear.

“I think I’ll feel more relieved when I know in fact that he is the person,” she said. “This is a very traumatic thing for everybody.”

Times staff writer Fred Alvarez contributed to this article.