Stories not being told, voices not being heard. Port Townsend Free Press set out to address that shortcoming in our local journalism scene. That means more than politics and investigative reporting, if we are to meet the goals we have set for ourselves. This young woman approached us with the idea of writing about her teen pregnancy and sharing what was in her head and heart at each step towards her son’s birth. Jefferson County is old, face it. Most people are far removed from the challenges of the children and teens around us. We need to be reminded, to learn and understand better what they are facing. We do not know where Ravyn will take us, but she has our trust and confidence. We hope and pray for the best, and want to let her know we support and admire the strong woman is becoming through the way she is embracing this huge challenge early in her young life. We publish her articles under the name which she has chosen for herself and by which she is known in her community–The Editor
A bright, new life enters the world through me. Even at 17 and knowing the impossibilities and challenges ahead, I know this child is more than me. God saved me through my baby boy. I had been a horrible person, to myself and others. This baby inside my body is transforming me. I wouldn’t do a thing to change His plan for me, and this child that now depends on me for everything.
Rent, diapers, stroller, car seat, food; a whirlwind of sudden expectations and needs that most won’t face at this age. That’s what this pregnancy has brought upon me–me and my husband, who is still a teenager himself. As a pregnant teen, I had many choices. Even as an adult I would have had these choices but they seemed more crucial at this young age. Do I abort my child? Give him up for adoption? Do I marry the father? Do I love the father? Was this even remotely a good mistake…? No, no, yes, yes, and no. There was no mistake, no accident. It all happened for a reason. I am convinced of that.
I hadn’t expected the test to be positive. Stress and hate and sadness and loneliness were all I could see and taste. My period being late? Common in situations of distress. Tired? Aren’t I always? But that test proved what many had said and told me was the truth. Maybe I was denying it to myself, but that extra pink line on that test card was unmistakable. My boyfriend at the time was sitting outside the restroom I was using. When I showed him the card with the colored lines, his whole face seemed to collapse, age, then brighten all within seconds. There was no doubt what we would do. It was ours, and this child would stay with us no matter the consequences.
Days passed. Another test. Another positive result. We had to tell our parents.
Everything went by in a blur after that. Our parents wanted to make sure we were not reading the results wrong. More tests followed. Papers were signed. I had to start learning about insurance, how much doctors cost and how medical bills get covered. Lots of appointments, the school year ending, the anxiety and joys of ultrasounds; my future was changing fast as my past dropped away. I married the father of my child on the 23rd of June, sealing our family together and starting a new chapter in three lives.
We moved in together. We pay rent together, laugh, cry, fight, and dream together. I couldn’t ask for more and I wouldn’t want any less. It seemed perfect. I got my old job back. I had my lover with me. My baby was healthy and growing. I was a new person.
Then my first paycheck came in….and the second. Realty hit hard. How could we ever make it on this small income? The Social Security for my husband stopped. He didn’t have a job and there suddenly was less than $500 a month between us…when rent was $700! I cried. “We can’t make it,” was my only thought. I was bringing my child into a world of disappointment, crime, sadness. The grim, daily news on the television and radio, the money not being enough, and not enough love in the world—in my life!—to compensate for the bad.
Jefferson County Prosecutor Michael Haas had a stronger case on retrial than the one that had sent Patrick McAllister to prison 6 years earlier. At the same time the defense case had gotten weaker.
But Haas threw the case away, turned loose a man with a long history of sexual assaults and revictimized the young woman who had looked to him for justice.
To read the reports leading up to this final installment, please click here.
McAllister’s Defense Stood on a Lie about an Artificial Knee
The Sheriff’s sergeant who responded to SL’s 911 call from McAllister’s Brinnon home has said she was the most terrified person he has encountered in his career. After she was removed from the house she began to trust the strangers trying to help her. Her story of 6 weeks of almost daily rapes, sometimes more than once a day, emerged. She spoke Waray-Waray, a little Tagalog and very little English. She moved into Dove House, Port Townsend’s domestic violence shelter. Counselors helped her talk about what happened.
Her story came in fits and starts. Details and dates translated into English were at times confused and conflicting, but the central facts never wavered.
A medical exam found lesions and evidence of bruising, injuries consistent with rape. The woman who said that she had been a virgin before that first rape in McAllister’s house also now had an STD.
McAllister at trial in 2012 limped to the stand and testified he could not possibly have raped SL. He had an artificial knee that “didn’t work right” and the ankle of the same leg had been injured. SL had testified that he would sometimes kick her. She testified he had raped her against the wall when she went into the bath to shower. He said her story was impossible because of his artificial knee.
This was the first time McAllister had said anything about an artificial knee. The best the prosecutor managed in closing was to mock McAllister for not presenting medical records or a physician to corroborate his last-minute claim.
Despite inconsistencies in SL’s account and a long delay in conducting a rape exam, the jury found McAllister guilty. He was sentenced to 250 months in prison.
The case was twice upheld on direct appeal. In a third round, McAllister’s new attorney, John Cain, argued that the trial lawyer had incompetently failed to buttress the artificial knee defense with medical testimony. Cain had a doctor ready to testify McAllister could not have raped SL because of that artificial knee. We have reproduced above a key part of that proposed testimony. The doctor was also willing to testify that the limited range of motion caused by the knee replacement made SL’s story about McAllister kicking her and raping her in the shower impossible. McAllister, he was willing to testify, could not get into and out of a bathtub without assistance because of his artificial knee.
Problem is, it’s all a lie.
McAllister did not get his artificial knee until a year after the alleged rapes. Indeed, he did not see a doctor about any knee problem until he knew he was under investigation. The rapes reported by SL occurred in March and April 2010. The medical records state McAllister:
Haas had this powerful evidence that McAllister was fabricating his main defense. It was in the medical history attached to the summary of the expert’s proposed testimony.
Here’s more: McAllister’s attorney perhaps inadvertently disclosed records referring to surveillance videos of McAllister shortly before the alleged rapes. The surveillance had been conducted in connection with McAllister’s claim of a workplace injury. They show him walking normally when he did not think he was being watched. They are discussed by the Court of Appeals. Haas knew about the videos but never obtained them for McAllister’s retrial.
And more: Shortly before SL arrived from the Philippines, McAllister pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a woman he picked up at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. They went to a bar to go dancing before he brought her to his home where he assaulted her. Haas never contacted that woman to contradict McAllister’s immobility defense.
And still more: In his guilty plea in that case, McAllister admitted the facts in the police report as the factual basis for his guilty plea. That report states he had raped three other women he had met at AA meetings. Haas never contacted those women to contradict McAllister’s physical incapacity claims.
Yes, more: McAllister’s hired expert contended McAllister could not get into a bathtub without assistance. But before SL arrived, McAllister lived alone. Photographs of his house show no ramps, no handrails, no modifications of bathtubs to accommodate mobility limitations. Someone who could not get in and out of a bathtub without assistance would have had great difficulty maintaining McAllister’s mountainside property.
It goes on: McAllister had hiked with SL in the valley above Brinnon. He took her all over Seattle. The man who couldn’t bend his leg swam at a resort in the Philippines.
Haas had all of this to destroy McAllister’s fabricated defense, and threw it away.
STD Sleight of Hand
Early in his efforts to persuade Haas to drop the case, Cain provided test results showing that McAllister did not have an STD. SL had an STD. She said she had been a virgin before McAllister. Therefore, the argument went, she got the STD from him. But a test showing McAllister negative for an STD made SL look like the liar and cast doubt about the rest of her statements.
Problem was, it was a test for the wrong STD.
Cain had sent Haas a test for Chlamydia. SL had not contracted Chlamydia, but HPV, human papillomavirus. It is the most common STD in the United States, particularly among sexually active men, as was McAllister.
Curious that a defense lawyer would order a test for only the wrong STD, a determined prosecutor might ask for all medical records to see if anything was being held back. McAllister’s medical records from five years in prison, where STDs are of particular concern, could have been examined. Instead, Haas was snookered into believing that McAllister was free of any STD.
Willing Surrender
In his motion to dismiss, Haas told the court that the first jury should never have heard evidence of SL’s vaginal bruises and lesions because they could not possibly have been caused by McAllister. How could he know with such certainty? There was nothing to explain those injuries except McAllister’s violence.
Haas had retained no medical experts to work with him. He made this assertion based solely on the statement of an expert hired by McAllister’s lawyer. That expert had never examined SL. He had never been questioned by Haas. His work had not been evaluated by a medical expert not being paid to help keep McAllister out of jail.
McAllister’s expert witness was not qualified in forensic medicine. He did not practice in the field of trauma diagnosis and treatment.
The opinion was founded on the single assertion that all signs of bruising disappear in two weeks or less. Period. No exceptions.
A simple Google search by Haas would have revealed this blanket assertion to be problematic. It depends very much on the individual and the nature of the injury. Women take longer to heal. Organs and sensitive areas take longer than arms and legs. SL had testified the rapes happened almost daily, sometimes more than once a day, for about six weeks, and McAllister would take pills to keep or cause an erection. She is tiny. McAllister is a much larger man. The sustained, repeated trauma was inflicted on very sensitive parts of her body.
Haas did not even try to keep this important corroborative evidence.
The Defense Lost Its Motive Argument
McAllister had to explain why SL would be making this all up.
At the first trial, his lawyer argued that this young Filipino woman had studied US immigration law and learned about the “U Visa.” The argument went like this: she agreed to marry McAllister to enter the country on a finance’ visa. She moved into his house knowing his long history of sexually assaulting women because it fit her scheme, even if it exposed her to danger. His criminal history would make her allegations of rape credible when she sprang her trap. She endured, waited six weeks, then called 911 alleging rape and abuse. She no longer needed to marry McAllister. She could stay under a “U Visa,” which ensures that victims of domestic abuse remain in-country to cooperate in the prosecution of sexual offenders.
Sound implausible? The first jury thought so.
This was the only motive McAllister’s lawyers could concoct. Now it was gone.
Eight years later SL had not changed her story. She wanted McAllister punished for what he did to her. She now had a green card that did not require her testimony about rape and abuse. McAllister had no way to explain why she would still be lying.
Conclusion: Injustice, Incompetence, Indifference
A jury had once found SL credible, beyond a reasonable doubt. Years later, with her memory fading, Haas nonetheless found her “very credible,” as he said in an email to Cain.
He had a stronger case than the prosecutor before him. The defense’s already lame case could no longer even limp to the witness stand.
In losing the Court of Appeals argument Haas had the evidence that McAllister was lying about the artificial knee defense, but never brought it up.
The records we have examined show Haas never was serious about retrying McAllister. He started talking with Cain about dismissal from the moment the case was returned to Jefferson County. In October of 2017 he told Cain he could not dismiss the case only for the reason “it was too big.” Yet, he did nothing to try to win.
Months went by, until March 6, 2018, when he finally spoke with SL about the facts of her case fast coming up for trial. He had a problem. She would not go away. She wanted justice.
Cain gave him an out. In February he sent Haas a polygraph he had arranged for McAllister. Even though McAllister was lying about his artificial knee defense, somehow he passed.
Haas turned to trained polygrapher Detective Joe Nole of the Sheriff’s Office for advice. We requested all of the communications between them on this subject. The response to our public records request from Haas was oddly scant. He dropped this case in large part because, as he told the court, he “could not ignore” the polygraph. Yet the records he produced contain no written report or memoranda on the reliability of McAllister’s polygraph examination.
The polygraph examination reveals reason to be skeptical. The examiner asked McAllister if he had ever tried to get a woman “to do something sexual she didn’t want to.” McAllister was also asked, other than SL, “in the past 20 years have you treated any woman in an abusive manner?” And, “have you made any woman feel abused or threatened.”
McAllister answered “no” to all these questions. Yet, he had pled guilty to sexual assault in 2009, admitting as part of his plea a report he had raped three other women; he had been arrested in Kitsap County for rape; and five women had taken out restraining orders against him because he was “violent, abusive and controlling.”
Detective Nole agreed to speak with us. From what he was provided to review he confirmed the exam did not detect deception. But that was far as he would go. He says he told Haas to pass this along to McAllister’s lawyer. “Let’s see how confident they are. Tell them, ‘Let Joe test you.’”
But even more importantly, Nole, like any good polygrapher, cautioned Haas: Don’t rely on this polygraph to make any decision. They are not that reliable.
Haas told none of this to the court when he moved to drop the charges.
Haas notified SL by email that he was turning loose the man she says raped and beat her. In that email, he said he believed her, though the very next day he would tell the court he had to believe McAllister because of the polygraph.
We were not sure how to write the conclusion to this series of reports on how Michael Hass dumped a rape case and its victim. Then it was provided for us. Just as we were struggling for the right closing words we received an email from SL’s brother. He wrote to let us know that SL was filing a complaint against Haas with the Washington State Bar Association.
[This article has been edited since initial publication for clarification and to correct typographical errors]
I had a brief and cordial correspondence recently with Port Townsend City Councilman David Faber about the way commissioners are elected in Jefferson County. With the race for District 3 County Commissioner perched atop the local ballot, I asked him how he felt about a system in which people who do not reside in District 3 can determine who will represent the people who live there.
Mr. Faber replied (I’m paraphrasing here) that he was basically okay with that because the county commission represents all residents of the county. That’s his opinion and I absolutely defend his right to it, but the logic struck me as quizzical. It’s analogous to allowing the people of Jefferson County to elect a member of Congress in the 14th Congressional District of Ohio or to decide the US Senate race in Montana because, as the logic goes, Congress represents all residents of the United States.
The fact people from Port Townsend or anywhere else not in District 3 having the power to vote for a commissioner to represent the people of Brinnon, Quilcene, Port Ludlow and other far flung corners of District 3, amounts to disenfranchisement of the people who live in District 3.
Primary elections for county commissioner are decided by voters who actually live in a particular district, but the winner in November is determined in what boils down to an at-large election. It’s farcical for District 3 citizens to determine the primary, only to have their decision potentially overturned in the general election by voters who do not live in the district.
This is fake democracy. If you’re happy with the status quo, stop reading now. But if you believe the current system for electing commissioners is flawed, it’s time to start thinking about how to bring representative democracy to Jefferson County.
It’s difficult to fathom the idea that citizens of 21st century America must labor to establish for themselves something called Home Rule. Requests for Home Rule are a relic of the colonial era, when peoples scattered across the continents, hardly any of whom were white, had to petition an emperor in London or Paris for the right of self-determination. Yet we in Jefferson County find ourselves in the position of drafting entreaties for the right to determine who will represent us within a governing body.
It begins with a petition for a Home Rule Charter, and the collection and submission of signatures of people who live in Jefferson County. Gathering the requisite number of signatures qualifies the issue to appear on the general election ballot. Voters are then asked whether they wish to proceed and elect a slate of fellow residents to deliberate and prepare a Home Rule Charter for the county.
If it sounds complicated, that’s because it is. It was tried in 2013 and the effort went down in flames with 70% of voters opposing the idea. It lost in every precinct in the county save Precinct 600, where 24 voters in Hoh supported Home Rule while 20 opposed it.
Would Jefferson County voters want to reconsider the issue? The process is onerous, labor intensive, time consuming and costly. It demands asking our neighbors to support liberty and restore the fundamental precepts of representative democracy.
No doubt the complexity of the matter turns off many voters. Even if a Home Rule Petition were approved, it would take years before we could properly enfranchise all the people of the county.Laden with so many steps over so long a period of time, the process of establishing Home Rule can easily cloud the larger idea: the idea of individual liberty, of the opportunity for people to determine their own destiny through the act of allowing people to vote for their own representative on the county commission.
It’s easy to dismiss these arguments as overly dramatic but they are real and fundamental to the character of America.
For whatever reason, Jefferson County voted five years ago to deny themselves the right to determine their own local representatives on the county commission. Has the time come to change how we elect our commissioners? The 2020 election cycle is not far away. It’s not easy, but nothing worth doing is ever is.
She couldn’t tell the prosecutor from the defense team. When SL walked into the room where Jefferson County Prosecutor Michael Haas had told her to appear for a deposition, she saw men so friendly with each other she felt isolated and alone. She had never met Haas. They had spoken for the first time ten days earlier. He had informed her she would have to appear at the Tacoma offices for the lawyer representing Patrick McAllister, who had previously been convicted of raping and assaulting her over a period of six weeks in 2010 and was facing retrial.
She had asked Haas to meet with her, to help her prepare to talk again about terrible things she had been trying to forget. She wanted to do a good job. She wanted to see McAllister brought to justice. But Haas would not help her get ready. All he did was send her a pile of paper she didn’t have time to look at until thirty minutes before the deposition started.
The deposition lasted over four hours. The transcript reveals only a single break of some minutes. It went through the lunch hour, but SL was not given a chance to eat. It was a grueling, difficult experience. She was taken again through the rapes, starting on March 18, 2010, when she arrived from the Philippines, a young woman from a small, remote village on the Island of Leyte. She then spoke and understood very little English.
She had met McAllister through her sister’s husband, an American. They had spoken by telephone then McAllister had visited. The men in her family guarded him at night because their poor house was lacking walls. McAllister grew weary of the village. He wanted to go to a resort. SL’s father came along to chaperone. He made them all sleep in the same room, with his daughter in his bed. After this he agreed to let her marry McAllister.
McAllister lied about his prior convictions for sexual assault to get SL through customs. (See this report by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.) He brought her to his Brinnon house (shown above) and the rapes began. She says that almost every day he forced intercourse upon her. He grabbed her neck and made her perform oral sex. He beat and kicked her. She tried pushing him off, but was overpowered. She is tiny. She stands not much taller than a grocery cart. McAllister had been an iron worker and weighed 170 pounds.
She was raped in the living room and bedroom, beaten in the kitchen, kicked for no reason while she was doing the cooking. When she locked the bathroom door to take a shower in peace, she says McAllister got the door open and raped her in the bathtub, pinning her against the wall.
She became sore and bruised; it didn’t matter. When McAllister needed a boost , she says, “he took a pill to make his penis strong.”
McAllister tried to keep her isolated. She was scared to use the telephone—until the day she found the courage to call 911 and ask for help in getting out of his house. The Sheriff’s sergeant who arrived at the house says she was the most terrified person he has encountered in his law enforcement career.
She answered all the investigator’s questions, never backing down. Sometimes she asked the meaning of words or couldn’t remember exact dates. But she always answered, no matter how humiliating the question.
Haas did not help. He never called for a break. Contrary to the rules on depositions, he let an investigator grill SL. He did not stop questions about relationships before and after the incidents. She was made to name her current boyfriend. She was made to state the age at which her menstruation began.
SL had asked DeeDee Spann to be present and Spann was there, but only as an observer. Spann was a victim/witness advocate in the Prosecutor’s Office. She had previously worked at Port Townsend’s domestic violence shelter, Dove House, where SL had stayed and received counseling after she fled McAllister.
Spann was so upset by the mistreatment of SL that with Haas’ Chief Deputy Prosecutor, Julian St. Marie, she sought a judicial order to stop it from happening again.
The motion was necessary because at the end of the deposition, Haas had agreed to give the defense lawyer and his investigator another shot at SL.
Highly Irregular
James Kennedy, a prosecutor in Clallam County and a former prosecutor in Haas’ office, has severely criticized Haas for letting any of this happen. He is challenging Haas in the November election. He says that prosecutors should always fight to keep a rape victim from going through something like this. Haas’ predecessor, Scott Rosekrans, who won the initial rape conviction of McAllister, agrees.
Haas might dismiss their concerns as politically motivated. But members of his own office also felt that the deposition he permitted veered out of bounds.
Before the second deposition could occur, Spann and St. Marie went to court to try to stop what Haas had agreed to.
Spann told the court that SL “was visibly distraught and tearful at times.” She described the questioning as “relentless and with a very accusatory tone.” The transcript shows that Haas never called for a break to allow SL to compose herself. He never objected to the investigator’s conduct. To the contrary, at several points in the deposition he cracks jokes and makes light-hearted small talk with McAllister’s team.
In her motion, St. Marie argued that the sole purpose of the questioning was “bad faith” and intended “to annoy, embarrass or oppress the victim.” She pointed out that SL’s relationships before and after the rapes were matters placed off limits by Washington’s rape shield laws and that only lawyers are permitted to take depositions.
Haas has not answered our questions as to why he arranged for and allowed SL to be subjected to such an ordeal.
We asked Rosekrans, who knew SL well from the first trial, why Haas would let the victim he was supposed to be standing up for be subjected to such mistreatment. .
“He must have been hoping she would be worn down and go away,” Rosekrans answered.
If that motive explained Haas’ otherwise inexplicable behavior, it didn’t pan out.
Instead of being worn down, SL demonstrated strength and determination. Yes, she would endure another deposition. She would do what it took to see that McAllister was retried. “I wanted to go to trial,” she has told us.
The case was set for May. Haas was not prepared. He had retained no expert witnesses nor interviewed any defense witnesses. He had not secured key evidence that would destroy McAllister’s credibility. He had not enlisted the assistance of the detective in charge of the case. He had not even notified SL and her sister, two of the only four witnesses he had named, to make arrangements to travel to Port Townsend. He had to do something.
Based on our interviews of SL and her brother, and a review of Haas’ correspondence and pleadings, what Haas did was avoid SL. He never met or spoke with her again before he dropped the charges.
Our next report will show that Haas cut loose a violent, dangerous man when he had a stronger case than the one that sent McAllister to prison six years earlier.
