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Trial begins for Burbank man accused of rape

The Daily Record - 3/20/2019

WOOSTER — The trial of a Burbank man accused of sexually abusing two of his stepdaughters over a three-year period about a decade ago began Monday, with the stepdaughters detailing the alleged assaults and the man’s defense attorneys working to show inconsistencies in their accounts, ultimately claiming they made up the allegations.

Richard Fortune, 41, is charged with four counts of rape, first-degree felonies, and five counts of sexual battery, second-degree felonies. The indictment, filed last March, alleges Fortune sexually abused the two girls between January 2007 and September 2010, when the girls were between 9 and 14 years old.

Senior assistant prosecutor John Williams said at the beginning of Monday’s proceedings before Judge Mark K. Wiest that Fortune previously declined a plea deal in which he would have been sentenced to 19 years in prison for pleading guilty to one count of rape and one count of sexual battery.

The girls, now women ages 18 and 22, both testified Monday.

The elder said Fortune, whom she considered her father, abused her “on a weekly basis” from the time she was 5 years old until she was 13. The indictment in the case only covers several alleged instances of abuse during the family’s time living on Emerick Street in Wooster.

“I was petrified,” the woman said of one of the earliest instances in which she said Fortune touched her inappropriately. “I didn’t know what to do.”

The woman said she never told anyone about the alleged abuse to anyone until after her younger sister disclosed the allegations in to a psychiatrist in 2017. After that disclosure, Wooster police began investigating the allegations against Fortune. During that investigation, which was led by WPD Capt. Anthony Lemmon, the older woman told police that Fortune also had abused her.

“All I ever wanted was for the truth to come out,” the older woman said. “I never wanted him to get in trouble, I just wanted the truth. ... I just want everyone to know that I’m not lying.”

The younger woman, in her testimony, said Fortune touched her inappropriately about five times total. All of those instances, she said, occurred as she slept on the couch in the living room of the house on Emerick Street. The woman said she would pretend to be asleep while Fortune molested her. But the last time he touched her, the woman said, she kicked him away and ran upstairs into her older sister’s room.

Fortune’s defense attorneys, Canton-based Christopher Coleridge and Akron-based Maxwell Hiltner, questioned both women on cross-examination about several inconsistencies that arose in different stages on the investigation.

During Coleridge’s opening statement Monday morning, he argued that the women made up the allegations against Fortune as a way to force their parents — who Coleridge said were in a dysfunctional relationship — to get a divorce.

“At this point, your Honor, they’re neck deep in this lie, (and) that simple idea to divorce their parents could lead to potential life incarceration,” Coleridge said to Wiest. “So what do they do? They get lost in their stories, your Honor. And you’ll hear about that, your Honor.”

Fortune’s attorneys also said the women made the allegations against him because he has trouble remembering events that occurred before 2012. Testimony on Monday revealed that Fortune’s memory issues stem from a 2012 suicide attempt that put him in a coma for several days. His attorneys also argued that the alleged abuse could not have taken place as often as the older woman said because Fortune worked as a long haul trucker, and was frequently gone from home for weeks at a time.

But Williams, in his opening argument, said the women are telling the truth about what happened to them and cannot forget the abuse Fortune subjected them to.

“Some things, one never forgets. (The women) can’t forget what happened to them,” Williams said. “And despite what the defendant, Richard Fortune, may claim — (that) he has forgotten all about, cannot remember, doesn’t know if it happened or not — they cannot forget.”

The trial is scheduled to resume at 8:30 a.m. today in the Wayne County Court of Common Pleas. Lemmon, who on Monday began testifying about the investigation into the allegations against Fortune, will conclude his testimony before the defense presents its case.

Reporter Jack Rooney can be reached at 330-287-1645 or jrooney@the-daily-record.com. He is on Twitter at twitter.com/?RooneyReports.

CREDIT: JACK ROONEY