Therapist notes paint Raar as a scary dog killer
Additional therapist notes paint a troubling picture during the period when the crimes occurred.
Randall Raar, the convicted child molester, is painted as a scary guy who may have killed the victim’s dog, but not a molester, according to more therapist notes with the victim from the time of the alleged attack.
“{The victim} verbalized well-expressed anger toward ‘Randy {Raar} for hurting Angel’ said ‘Jimmy did things that scared her,’ and that Bob scared her the most.” One set of notes from 1991 states.
Jimmy was the babysitter. who the victim would also identify as molesting her.
“She finally agreed to talk about one thing Jimmy did when ‘he licked me.’” The victim said in other notes from 1991.
In other notes, “{the victim} very convincingly revealed that Jimmy had penetrated her during babysitting.”
Bob is Bob Higgins, who was Raar’s roommate at the time.
In other notes, the victim stated, “In response to a question about a scary thing that happened, she responded, ‘When Bob touched me in my private.’”
Raar was described as someone scary who was trying to hurt her mom.
“{The victim} explained how they’d put up a 6-foot privacy fence and afterward the victim stated how Randy started at her and Angel when they played together.” Another set of notes stated.
“{The victim was} angry and Randy and Bob because they want to hurt mommy.” other notes from 1991 state.
“Fantasies about moving away as well as fantasies about punishing Randy,” notes from 1991 stated.
{The victim} identified sadness about Randy living next door, sadness and guilt over the abuse,” another set of notes from 1992 stated.
A therapist also noted that the victim had anger toward Raar because he ran over her dog with a car.
“Her anger towards Randy was because she believed that Randy ran over her dog with the car,” ther therapist was asked in 1991.
“Part of it,” the therapist responded.
What is not in the notes is any direct allegations that Raar molested her. The closest comes in notes which stated, “elicited feelings of guilt over her sexual experiences with Jimmy, as well as Bob and Randy.”
By 1999, the victim was still disclosing in therapy about abuse by Jimmy, “tearfully about beginning to re-experience memories of abuse by Jimmy.”
She would not disclose sexual molestation against Raar until 2006. That’s when police would canvas the area after finding child pornography in his home.
Raar has repeatedly said this child pornography was nothing more than a nudist colony magazine, and the entire investigation into him was in retaliation for his investigation of the Oakland County Child Killer.
Here is part of the appeal which details the allegations.
The 59-year-old defendant was convicted of sexually assaulting his then five-year-old neighbor in the summer of 1989 or 1990. In April 2006, the police received information that caused them to investigate defendant and canvass his former neighborhoods. At that time, they had contact with the victim, who alleged that defendant had sexually assaulted her when she was four or five years old by digitally penetrating her vagina. At trial, the 21-year-old victim testified that defendant and his roommate, Robert Higgins, lived next door to her family’s home. Defendant and Higgins encouraged the neighborhood children to come to their home and use their above-ground pool. The victim indicated that she and her neighbor, AB, were among the children who spent time at defendant’s house. The victim explained that defendant and Higgins, both dressed in swimsuits, would be in the pool and catch the children as they came down an attached slide. The victim stated that defendant would “catch [them] between [their] legs and put his hands—or try to put his hands up [them].”
Raar tried to argue in his appeal that the allegations in 2006, when the victim was twenty-one, were from a repressed memory.
The prosecution challenged this and argued the rather than being repressed the victim was simply too scared until 2006.
Defendant requested an expert in clinical psychology to investigate the defense that the victim had suffered from repressed memory, given that she waited several years before reporting the alleged sexual assault. The prosecution opposed defendant’s request because the victim’s memory was not repressed and “the facts were never out of her conscious control,” but rather, she chose not to disclose the acts because of defendant’s threats to harm her parents. The trial court found that defendant did not make a sufficient showing of the need for an expert and denied his request without prejudice, allowing him the opportunity to produce an affidavit or other offer of proof of what an expert could offer, but that was not done. At a subsequent pretrial hearing, the trial court ruled that there had been no showing that this is “a repressed memory case.”
…
The trial court did not abuse its discretion when it concluded that defendant had not demonstrated a sufficient nexus between the facts of the case and the need for an expert to investigate a claim of “repressed memory.” The victim testified that she did not disclose defendant’s sexual abuse until years later because she feared that defendant would harm her parents, and consistently testified that her memories of what defendant had done were not repressed, have always been with her, and that she “always knew what defendant did to [her]. It never went away.” Additionally, the record supports the victim’s claims that she feared defendant. The victim’s grandmother testified that she recalled visiting the family when the victim was approximately five years old, and the victim ranting that she “hated” defendant because he was “going to kill her mother.” Also, while the victim was in counseling in 1991 to 1993, related to her molestation by a babysitter, she repeatedly told the psychotherapist that she was afraid of defendant because he wanted to hurt her mother. The psychotherapist explained that it was common for children not to disclose abuse because of threats.
The appeals court ruled in favor the prosecution.
Raar also argued in his appeal that he could not present evidence the victim had not identified him when she spoke to police about Jimmy. The court and appeals court rejected this argument as well.
Raar had another problem during the trial. Along with the victim, another alleged victim came forward. She was thirty-seven, testifying about things which happened when she was eight through thirteen.
The trial court and the appeals court both ruled that testimony went to pattern rather than character. The appeal noted that Raar’s attorney cross examined the victim extensively on the delay in reporting the crime. The jury accepted this evidence and determined it was guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
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Postscript
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