Man Gets 20 Years for Rape of Girl, 8

A handyman who pleaded guilty Friday to charges he kidnapped and raped his fiancee’s 8-year-old daughter received a 20-year prison sentence following testimony from the girl’s mother about the crime’s devastating aftermath.

Robert Leroy Granger previously admitted to police he raped the girl, took her to a motel and then concocted a phony story about a break-in and abduction from the family’s Fullerton apartment, Deputy Dist. Atty. Camille Hill said.

Police later found the child at an Anaheim motel, but not before a frantic day-long search by police with bloodhounds that a tearful Granger had joined.

The child said Granger raped her at the apartment and then took her, bound and gagged in a laundry basket, to the motel, Hill said. She was told not to leave the room after again being molested. But when she saw her picture on television during a late-night broadcast, she told police she managed to free herself and ran to the room next door for help.

Granger, then 34, had met the girl’s mother about seven years earlier. They had been engaged for two months at the time of the July 22, 1994, crime.

The child’s mother, Hill said, testified Friday about her anger toward the man she had trusted to take care of her son and daughter while she worked. She said her daughter has been in counseling for more than a year and still has nightmares about her ordeal that included being bound to a bed and victimized with a Taser gun, Hill said.

The mother, eight months pregnant at the time of the crime, said her baby--no relation to Granger--was born with “fetal distress” and is now handicapped, Hill said.

The prosecutor said Granger faced a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison, but agreed to plead guilty when Orange County Superior Court Judge David T. McEachen said he could receive a 20-year sentence instead. The judge’s agreement spared the girl from having to testify during a trial.