A college student accused of plying a teen with heroin and methamphetamine, sexually abusing her and taking explicit photographs faced the prospect of prison if convicted of more than two dozen felony sex crimes.
Instead, he is expected to walk out of a Portland courtroom with probation.
The plea deal represents a controversial coda to the disturbing case, one apparently influenced by a push to confront a massive backlog that threatens to swamp the court system.
Since the start of the pandemic, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office has seen double-digit increases in pending cases involving alleged child abuse, property crimes, violent crimes and gun and other weapons crimes, according to data provided by the office.
The highest spike: Pending domestic violence prosecutions, which rose 68% from the start of the pandemic through the end of 2020.
The sex crime case set to wrap up Wednesday with probation represents an approach that victim advocates worry about in the weeks and months ahead as the criminal justice system plows through the staggering pileup.
Crime victims, they fear, will become an overlooked casualty of the pandemic.
While individual cases have always come with their own complexities and circumstances that factor into any plea negotiations, the pandemic should not mean that justice delayed equals justice denied, said Meg Garvin, executive director of the National Crime Victim Law Institute and a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School.
“Prosecutors all across this country seem to be so concerned about the backlog of cases that they are expediting plea agreements,” Garvin said. “They seem to be more concerned with moving people through the system than paying attention to victims’ interests.”
The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office prioritizes crime victims and engages with them throughout the prosecution of a case “and this case was no different,” said spokesman Brent Weisberg.
“From the start, the District Attorney’s Office treated this case with the highest priority, seriousness, respect and compassion,” Weisberg said.
But it did not feel that way to the young woman at the center of the case.
“I lost,” said the teenager, now 18. “Nothing I thought was going to happen happened.”
She questioned why she bothered to take part in a criminal investigation that involved multiple interviews with police and prosecutors over the past two years and required her to turn over dozens of photographs that make her recoil in shame and horror. The Oregonian/OregonLive does not typically identify victims of sex crimes.
“I’ve been doing all of this for nothing,” she said.
EXAMPLES NATIONWIDE, ADVOCATE SAYS
Across the state, the pandemic prompted delayed hearings and trials. For months, all but essential matters were put on hold.
The experience has left victims feeling like an afterthought.
The problem is national in scope, Garvin said.
She noted lapses in notifying victims about a defendant’s release from jail or prison and remote court proceedings where victims’ privacy has been compromised. She cited instances where domestic violence victims’ names and addresses have been revealed in live-streamed court hearings.
She said victims’ treatment by the justice system may have consequences.
“I think the long-term impact is that they are not going to engage,” she said. “The next time there is a victimization in that person’s family or in the community, they are going to think, well, criminal justice is not for me.”
Last week in Michigan, a judge halted a live-streamed Zoom hearing when a prosecutor told the court she suspected that an alleged domestic violence perpetrator was in the apartment with the alleged victim, who appeared via video. The prosecutor feared the man was intimidating the woman, who was asked to give her home address on livestream.
“It’s the first time I ever had anybody sitting in the next room potentially intimidating a witness,” the stunned judge said.
Rosemary Brewer, executive director of the Oregon Crime Victims Law Center, a nonprofit that advocates for victims, pointed to instances where courts in Oregon have required victims to take part in hearings by phone instead of giving them the choice to confront the defendant in person in court.
“That’s not fair, that’s not equity,” she said.
The pandemic, she said, has upended the delicate balance between defendants and victims.
That balance is enshrined in the Oregon Constitution, which guarantees victims the right to justice, the right to a “meaningful role” in the criminal justice system and the right to dignity and respect.
“When the priority is to resolve cases,” Brewer said, “that balance is no longer in place.”
The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office has made pandemic-inspired plea offers but has not tracked how many, Weisberg said.
Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt”,”type”:”text
District Attorney Mike Schmidt said in a written statement that he has urged prosecutors to take a “pragmatic approach” when crafting pretrial offers “so that we can ensure accountability, get people into treatment, provide them services and to afford victims restitution.”
District Attorney Mike Schmidt said in a written statement that he has urged prosecutors to take a “pragmatic approach” when crafting pretrial offers “so that we can ensure accountability, get people into treatment, provide them services and to afford victims restitution.”
Weisberg confirmed the approach includes most person-to-person crimes.
“We are working with the court, the Sheriff’s Office and the defense bar to schedule hearings and trials as quickly and as safely as possible so that justice is not delayed even further,” Schmidt said.
Supervising prosecutors elsewhere in the state said they have made attractive offers in lower-level cases to, as Clackamas County Chief Deputy District Attorney Chris Owen put it, “try to ease the pressure on the system” from the pandemic.
In Clackamas and Washington counties, prosecutors said they have drawn a line at serious property crimes, as well as person-to-person crimes such as assault, sex crimes and child abuse.
In Marion County, District Attorney Paige Clarkson said her office hasn’t changed its plea offers regardless of the nature of the case.
“Justice always matters, no matter if you are in the middle of a pandemic or otherwise,” Clarkson said. “There is a right thing and a wrong thing. We did not want to sacrifice public safety, offender accountability and victims’ rights.”
FATHER WENT TO POLICE
In the Multnomah County case, the teenager said she was depressed, anxious and using alcohol, marijuana and cocaine when a friend introduced her to Evan Llewelyn in January 2019.
She was a junior in high school. Llewelyn at the time was enrolled at Portland State University, according to school records.
Her relationship with Llewelyn quickly became sexual, she said. She was 16, two years younger than the legal age of consent in Oregon.
She said he encouraged her to try heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs and urged her to skip class.
Llewelyn pulled her deeper into the grip of addiction, she said.
“He saw me in this state that was so vulnerable and started manipulating me into believing he was a good person and he loves me and can protect me,” she said.
She said addiction clouded her thinking.
“All I was thinking about was drugs, not that I was being groomed,” she said. “I didn’t realize it and eventually he did pressure me into trying numerous different drugs that he didn’t name.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” she said. “He would say, ‘Try this.'”
She said her final memory of Llewelyn involved him “screaming at me, throwing things around” and trying to get her to “drive him to go get drugs.”
“I sat down crying,” she said. “I remember thinking, I can’t do this anymore. Like, what am I doing? Is this really who I am? What is even going on?”
About three weeks after first meeting Llewelyn, the teen returned to home, drug-addled and frightened.
Her father was distraught and panicked over his daughter’s state.
He said he examined the teen’s phone and discovered a series of disturbing text messages with Llewelyn and dozens of explicit photographs of Llewelyn and his daughter.
She later told police she sent some of the images to Llewelyn.
She said she does not remember much of what happened.
“I feel it in my body, but I can’t remember,” she said. “I don’t want to remember.”
The teen’s father reported Llewelyn to Portland police.
ALLEGATIONS ‘FOUNDED’
The accounts of the teen and her father are detailed in police and child welfare reports obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Portland Officer Dina Kashuba noted in her report that during her initial interview with the teen’s father she saw group texts on the girl’s phone from Llewelyn to the teen and others directing the group “to delete all their text conversations with him.”
Those messages, Kashuba noted, discussed drug sales. Llewelyn is not accused of any drug crimes.
The teen’s mental health crisis landed her in the hospital, she said. That spring, the teen’s family sent her to a residential therapeutic program in Deschutes County, where she also was interviewed by Sheriff’s Office Detective Joshua Barker.
The teen told Barker she came forward because she did not want others to suffer a similar fate.
That summer, in an interview with child welfare authorities from the Oregon Department of Human Services, the teen said she gave Llewelyn money for him to buy them both drugs and that she “at times” felt pressured into having sex with him.
A child welfare report noted that the teen “suffered immense trauma due to the sexual abuse she has encountered.”
He concluded that the teen’s allegations of sexual abuse were “founded.”
In September, the teen went through another round of interviews, this time with Detective Michael Bledsoe assigned to Portland’s sex crimes unit.
Bledsoe noted in his report that the teen said she “felt like she could not say no to the sex with Llewelyn because he was giving her illegal drugs.”
She told Bledsoe that Llewelyn manipulated her and became angry when she “tried not to have sex” with him.
She told the detective she sent sexually explicit images of herself to Llewelyn and that Llewelyn occasionally took explicit photographs and videos of the two of them.
“It was never my word against his,” she told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “There was so much to build this case on.”
Bledsoe concluded he had probable cause to arrest Llewelyn on suspicion of 30 counts of second-degree sexual abuse because the teen was underage, as well as six counts of using a child in a display of sexually explicit conduct, a Measure 11 felony that comes with a 70-month mandatory minimum sentence.
That fall, a Multnomah County grand jury returned a 25-count indictment against Llewelyn.
All of the charges were felonies and 20 of them were Measure 11 offenses.
DA OFFER: PROBATION
Last month, veteran Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney BJ Park sent a letter to Llewelyn’s lawyer, David Lesh.
The letter, which was obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive, said the District Attorney’s Office faced “an extraordinary and unprecedented” backlog stemming from the pandemic.
“The following pre-trial offer,” the letter said, “is made in response to this crisis.”
The offer: Plead guilty to two felonies — luring a minor and second-degree sexual abuse — in exchange for five years of probation.
Under the terms of the agreement, the state agreed to drop the sexual abuse charge if Llewelyn successfully completes probation.
The rest of the charges would be dismissed.
“The family is very disappointed in the conditions of this plea,” said Christine Mascal, a Portland lawyer representing the woman and her father.
She said the two were particularly upset that Llewelyn would not be required to register as a sex offender. “That was a hard point for the family,” she said.
Lesh called the offer “a routine disposition” in line with those he negotiated with the District Attorney’s Office before the pandemic.
Lesh, a former prosecutor, said the case boils down to two troubled young people who are three and a half years apart who had sex.
He pointed out that the teen had sex and used drugs such as cocaine before she met Llewelyn and that she, like his client, had serious mental health problems.
He said Llewelyn has done extensive drug treatment since his arrest and said Llewelyn is living in a clean-and-sober house and is looking for work.
Portland State University records show the man has not attended the school since spring of 2019.
“He comes from a really good family,” he said. “Unfortunately, he spiraled into addiction and he’s doing his darndest to lead a sober lifestyle.”
He said Llewelyn has “real mental health issues” and that he provided information about the man’s efforts to address them to prosecutors.
“The prosecutor,” he said, “was very impressed with (Llewelyn’s) inpatient treatment.”
‘FIRESALE AT THE DA’S OFFICE’
The woman said she was not as interested in seeing Llewelyn do jail or prison time. She wanted him to register as a sex offender, a step she said would have served as a warning to other teens and women.
Mascal, also a former prosecutor, said Park told them that the District Attorney’s Office needed to move through cases because of the pandemic and the Llewelyn offer was part of that effort.
She said she recalled the prosecutor saying that “for a short time, there is going to be a firesale at the DA’s Office on cases to get them moving and a lot of that has to do with the backlog.”
The offer landed like a gut punch for the teen.
“That’s when I was like, this isn’t going to work for me,” she said. “I have been doing all of this for nothing.”
Park declined to comment on his discussions with Mascal and the teen’s father, citing rules that prohibit him from speaking publicly on a pending case.
Weisberg said a victim’s assistant program representative and the prosecutor “communicated regularly – including over weekends and after hours – with the victim’s family and their attorney.”
The resolution, he said, is fair and consistent with prior cases with similar facts and circumstances.
“We heard, considered and understand the concerns they raised,” Weisberg said. “Ultimately, the defendant must be treated the same as any other similarly situated defendant.”
‘I WILL NEVER HEAL’
Brenda Tracy, a survivor and national sex-assault advocate, said sex crimes — and how they are handled by the justice system — leave a lasting legacy.
“Not all survivors make it,” said Tracy, who came forward in 2014 to talk about being gang-raped by four college football players, including two who were on the team at Oregon State University.
She said court experiences can undermine survivors’ sense of self-worth.
“She has gone through the original trauma, survived it, found the courage to find some sort of healing through the justice system and now she is being betrayed again,” Tracy said.
The teenager said she feels diminished by the criminal justice system.
“I am still not healed from this,” she said. “I never will heal. Somebody took away a part of me that’s deserving of love and I don’t know if I can get it back.
“This trauma will follow me forever. There is no easy way to repair it. I am going to be dealing with this for way more than five years.”
