Rape Northern California

June Williams couldn't believe it. He was snoring. The man she says raped and savagely beat her for hours was sleeping, an arm and a leg thrown over her, pinning her down. Her heart pounded so fast, she thought it would wake him. Inch by inch, the seconds stretching into hours, Williams gently lifted his arm and freed her upper body; then she slid out from under his leg.

Guards at Corcoran State Prison are under renewed state criminal investigation for allegedly setting up the rape of an inmate, state officials confirmed Tuesday as a two-day legislative hearing began on allegations of widespread brutality and cover-up at the San Joaquin Valley prison. Testimony at the hearing also confirmed that the FBI is now looking into a 1995 incident in which a busload of black inmates from Calipatria State Prison was beaten by a team of guards upon arrival at Corcoran.

A former track coach with a criminal record was arraigned Wednesday in the alleged rapes of four women, and a conviction could send him to prison for 35 years to life under the state's three-strikes law. Tony Ransom, who coached track at the girls-only Holy Names Catholic High School in Oakland, was arrested at his San Leandro home Monday in the Aug. 20 attack on a Chabot College student.

Misdemeanor charges of filing a false police report were filed against a Davis woman whose account of a gang rape by skateboarding teen-agers caused two weeks of tension in this college community. Davis Police Sgt. Donald Brooks said the complaint filed against Janet Berger, 44, carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $500 fine. On Aug. 2, Berger told police that she had been raped on a bicycle path by five youths on skateboards.

For three weeks, discussion in this bucolic college town swirled around a report that a woman was wrestled from her bike by a wilding gang of skateboarding teens and raped on one of the city's parklike greenbelts. Townsfolk demanded arrests. Threatening anti-male graffiti, including the slogan "Dead Boys Don't Rape," was scrawled on an overpass favored by skateboarders. Police questioned 75 boys. But this weekend the story took another shocking turn when the woman recanted.

A 31-year-old convicted sex offender has been charged with raping a woman in a Fresno motel less than 12 hours after he left a prison as part of a court-mandated release at penitentiaries throughout California. The arrest of James Edward Porter confirmed the worst fears of authorities about the state corrections system's release Wednesday of 93 mentally ill inmates--an estimated half of whom are also sex offenders.

Corcoran State Prison may be known as America's deadliest lockup, a place notorious for its own brand of inmate punishment, but among townsfolk in this conservative farm belt it is just another dependable employer down the street. The walls of the maximum-security prison rise 15 miles from the dairies and walnut groves of Hanford, and the guards who work there are next door neighbors and Little League coaches. The prison's honor guard marches in the local cotton parade.

Two Corcoran State Prison guards accused of setting up the rape of former inmate Eddie Dillard testified Friday that Dillard concocted his entire story and that they had no way of knowing he would be assaulted and raped when they moved him into another inmate's cell. Officers Anthony Sylva and Dale Brakebill say they were not aware that the new cellmate, Wayne Robertson, was the notorious Booty Bandit, a convicted murderer with a long history of raping his cellmates. "I didn't know who Mr.

A confessed serial rapist faces possible execution after a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder for shooting one of his victims, a teen-age Japanese exchange student. The verdict against Gregory Calvin Smith, 30, includes the special circumstances of kidnaping and rape, which means Smith could be sentenced to death. A jury will determine if Smith should be executed or go to prison for life.

A former Santa Rosa Catholic priest has been charged with sexual crimes, including the rape of a 14-year-old girl in 1977 and the molestation of a 13-year-old girl four years later. Don Kimball, a former youth minister, has been charged with four counts including rape and child abuse in connection with his contact with the two girls, who were both parishioners at the Resurrection Parish in Santa Rosa where Kimball was assigned. Sonoma County Dist. Atty. J.