OJAI/VENTURA : Man Pleads Not Guilty to Assaults
Peter A. Stocks on Friday denied his involvement in a string of sexual assaults on three elderly women in Ojai and east Ventura and pleaded not guilty to 17 counts of rape and related charges.
The Ojai man is accused of breaking into the homes of three elderly women while they slept and sexually assaulting them last summer. One of the victims, an 89-year-old Ojai woman, testified at the preliminary hearing that she was tied to her bed and assaulted by a man in August.
Stocks’ trial is scheduled to start Jan. 22. He could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted on all charges, prosecutors said. He remains jailed in lieu of $500,000 bail.
The attacks earlier this year opened old wounds in Ojai, which experienced a series of rapes and sexual assaults the previous summer. Kevin Malone was recently sentenced to nearly 63 years in prison for those assaults.
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