Man Admitted Beating Girl

A former UC Irvine student charged with raping and torturing a 15-year-old girl he met through the Internet told police he beat her because she slapped him and threatened to falsely accuse him of statutory rape, according to testimony given Wednesday in his trial.

Brian Dance, 22, of Newport Beach has been held in the Orange County Jail on seven felony charges since he was arrested in December 2001 after a friend of the alleged victim played a decoy in an Internet sting. Dance has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.

The alleged victim, now 17, testified Wednesday that she did not hit Dance or do anything to anger him when he took her to a UCI parking lot deserted over the winter break. She said he covered her eyes and bound her wrists with duct tape, then raped her, whipped her with his belt and carved swastikas in her face.

The trial started Tuesday in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana and is expected to continue through next week, attorneys said. Dance waived his right to a jury trial; the case will be decided by Judge Frank F. Fasel. The alleged victim’s identity has not been publicly identified.

According to police reports and Wednesday’s testimony, Dance met the girl Dec. 20 at the Block in Orange a month after they first met through the Internet. Dance then drove her in his parents’ Honda Accord to UCI, where he told her he was to meet a friend.

There Dance and the girl’s accounts diverge sharply.

Dance told police during an 80-minute interrogation, played Wednesday in court, that the girl asked him in the parking lot if he wanted to date her. Dance said he told her she was “too ugly” to consider as a girlfriend, he said. At that point, he said, she “got crazy,” threatened to accuse him of statutory rape and slapped him twice.

Then he whipped her stomach with the buckle end of his belt, spanked her and used a knife to try to scar her cheeks and forehead with swastikas because they are “symbols of hate,” he said.

The beating -- which knocked out one of her teeth -- was intended to punish her, he said.

“I just lost it, I admit,” Dance said in the audiotape. “I was like a madman.... I was trying to teach her a lesson. I told her, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but you kind of deserved it.’”

The defense submitted two photos taken the day Dance was arrested showing a scratch on his neck. But Dance did not claim the girl had scratched him or that he was in pain, said Irvine Police Det. Larry Montgomery, the lead investigator.

Dance’s attorney, Marlin Stapleton Jr., denied a rape occurred.

“We have him being angered over being falsely accused because he didn’t want to get involved with her sexually,” he said during an afternoon break. “What happened was more out of anger than any sort of sexual gratification.”

Stapleton, who waived his opening statement, declined to go into further detail about Dance’s defense.

According to the girl, she never slapped Dance or told him to stop hurting her. She grew increasingly testy as Stapleton pressed her on whether she attacked Dance.

“I said mostly nothing, unless he was hitting me,” she said. “Then I would kind of scream a little. I tried to hold it in because he would get madder the more noise I made.”

At one point she managed to pull the duct tape from her eyes and told him, “Just kill me.” According to her, he replied, “I’m not going to kill you. I don’t do that.”

Then he threw her out of the car and drove away, and she flagged down a passing motorist for help.

Dance was arrested after the girl’s friend arranged for them to meet at the Block three days after the attack. The girls had looked online for Dance’s screen name, punkrawkjock2001, after detectives told the alleged victim and her aunt that they should try to find him.

When he was arrested, Dance had a knife and a roll of duct tape on the seat next to him. He carries a knife in his glove box to ward off carjackings, he told police.

The duct tape was there on both occasions “not for any particular reason,” he said.