Tapes Told Whole Story Against Child Molester

Brian Burke Ray will spend the rest of his life in prison for molesting children in Orange County and Colorado. But it wasn’t his victims that brought him to justice; it was the videotapes he kept of each incident, police said Thursday.

Ray, 38, was sentenced to 82 years in prison by Orange County Superior Court Judge Kazuharu Makino last week after he pleaded guilty to 111 counts of child molestation. He already had been convicted of similar charges in Colorado and sentenced to 60 years in prison.

“He videotaped all of the victims,” said Buena Park Police Det. Ken Ash, who helped investigate the case. “We got those 111 counts from watching the videos, and had no other evidence other than the videos.”

Apparently none of the 15 children Ray molested from 1987 to 1991 were aware that they were being victimized and didn’t turn in the man who befriended their families, police said.

“He would convince these people that he was a really neat guy and he would end up baby-sitting them,” Ash said. “None of the victims were aware at the time that things were happening to them.”

After gaining their trust, Ray would molest the boys and girls, who ranged in age from 3 to 9, while they were asleep or secretly videotape them going to the bathroom. The detective said the acts did not appear to have traumatized the victims, whom police never interviewed. Instead, police contacted their parents to confirm their identities.

“The molestation was pretty subtle,” Brea Det. David Wearp said. “He pretty much knew what he could get away with in each age group.”

Ray admitted that what he was doing was “immoral,” but he contended he was not aware that it was illegal, Ash said.

Ray, a former Brea resident, was arrested in 1995 in Aurora, Colo., on child molestation charges. The Orange County connection was established when the videotapes were discovered in his home.

“It took some time to find out who [the victims] were,” Wearp said.

Ray must serve a minimum of 30 years in Colorado before he begins his sentence in Orange County, where he must serve a minimum of 41 years. He will be 107 when he is first eligible for parole, police said.