Third-Strike Offender Gets 80 Years to Life for Rapes, Assaults

A Canoga Park man was sentenced Tuesday to 80 years to life in state prison for raping and assaulting three women he met over the Internet.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Terry Smerling also ordered Daniel Zabuski, a registered sex offender, to pay $500 in restitution.

Zabuski, 42, was convicted in February. He is a third-strike offender with prior convictions on sex offenses dating to 1983.

The onetime police cadet gained notoriety in 1986 when a judge ruled that prostitutes cannot be raped and threw out a case against him. In another case, Zabuski sexually assaulted two teenage girls while posing as a talent scout. He served nine years in state prison on that case and was released in September 1999.

The most recent attacks occurred in Burbank and Canoga Park between October 1999 and March 2000. He was arrested in April 2000 on suspicion of raping one woman. After the case was publicized, three others came forward and said that he also assaulted them.

The trial, which took place in Pasadena, lasted one month.

According to Deputy Dist. Atty. Amy Suehiro, Zabuski met the women on the Internet. He got to know one woman in an online chat room for people interested in dominant and submissive sex. He contacted the others through America Online’s instant messaging system after reading their user profiles.

When he met them in person, he sexually assaulted them. Two of the women were attacked at Zabuski’s home in Canoga Park and one at her Canoga Park residence. A fourth case, which prompted a 6-6 deadlock, involved a woman who said she was attacked at a Burbank hotel.

Defense attorney James Barnes argued that Zabuski had consensual sex with each woman and that the women had wanted to engage in sadomasochistic acts with him. Zabuski’s wife has said she believes her husband is only guilty of infidelity.

Suehiro said the case showed that women should not trust the men they meet over the Internet. She said the victims did not use common sense.