Newport Man Guilty of 2001 Rape, Torture

A 22-year-old former UC Irvine student could be sentenced to multiple life terms after being convicted Thursday of torturing and raping a 15-year-old Orange girl he met through the Internet.

Brian Dance of Newport Beach cried as he was led from Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana back to Orange County Jail, where he has been in custody since his arrest in December 2001.

Dance is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 26 for seven felonies: three rape charges, forced oral copulation, robbery, criminal threats and torture.

The girl, who has not been publicly identified, testified that Dance picked her up at the Block in Orange and then drove her to a UCI parking lot deserted over the winter break. He held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her, then covered her eyes and bound her wrists with duct tape. Then he raped her, whipped her with his belt hard enough to fracture a front tooth and tried to carve swastikas in her face.

According to computer experts, the day before the attack Dance browsed pornography Web sites he found after searching the Internet under the words “brutal rape.”

The victim and her family were not present for the verdict, decided by Judge Frank F. Fasel in the non-jury trial 20 minutes after closing arguments.

After the verdict, Dance’s parents left the courtroom in tears and declined to comment.

“It’s been an extremely difficult year and a half for them,” said Dance’s attorney, Marlin Stapleton Jr. “Up until this date in time he was a model kid.”

The three-day trial ended after testimony from one of the girl’s friends, who played a decoy in an Internet-based sting that led to Dance’s arrest at the Block three days after he attacked the victim.

Stapleton did not call any witnesses on Dance’s behalf, nor did Dance testify. The lawyer said the verdict did not surprise him and he would not appeal.

Stapleton said in his closing statement that Dance should not be convicted of rape because he wasn’t attracted to the girl and thus did not intend the attack as sexual abuse or for sexual gratification. The judge said he discounted that argument because Dance had recently looked at Internet pornography depicting forced sex.

Stapleton also said that considered individually, the girl’s injuries were not severe enough to qualify as torture.

He added that the rest of the allegations had not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt but did not elaborate.

Dance told police the night he was arrested that he attacked the victim because she had threatened to accuse him of statutory rape, after he told her she was “too ugly” to be his girlfriend. She slapped him, then he “just lost it,” he said.

“It was not sexual. It was to punish her,” he told police. “I was like a madman.”

The judge said he did not believe Dance’s allegations that the girl had planned to falsely accuse him of rape. Even if Dance was believable, Fasel said, “in no way does that diminish any of these crimes.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Steve McGreevy said in his closing statement that the beating’s duration and severity, in addition to the Web sites and the fact that Dance kissed the girl at the end, showed he was looking for sexual gratification.

“He wasn’t keeping the victim in his car for 2 1/2 hours because he was angry,” McGreevy said. “Why focus on those intimate private areas if not for sexual abuse?”

The attack did not physically scar the victim, although she said the bruises and welts on her face, stomach, buttocks and cervix caused her pain for two weeks after the beating on Dec. 20, 2001. During her testimony Tuesday and Wednesday, she remained calm.