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ML man sentenced to 11 months for rape of juvenile family member

Columbia Basin Herald - 3/20/2019

March 20-- Mar. 20--EPHRATA -- A Moses Lake man who pleaded guilty to rape of a juvenile family member has received a 53.5 month sentence, reduced to 11 months as part of a Special Sex Offender Sentence Alternative barring any violations of sentencing conditions.

Sage Rutherford Utter, 24, pleaded guilty Jan. 22 on one count of first-degree incest and two counts of third-degree rape of a child in relation to a October 2018 incident involving Utter and a family member with a mental disability who was 14 years old at the time of the incident.

The assault allegedly occurred at the Moses Lake home of the victim's grandparents, who reported the incident to police after taking the victim to Samaritan Hospital to undergo a sexual assault kit.

Though the grandparents took the victim to the hospital the same day as the incident, there was no practitioner immediately available certified to collect the sexual assault kit, and the family was forced to wait a day before the test could be administered.

When officers interviewed the victim, she told them she had regularly been sexually harassed by Utter and had also been raped by him when she was 5 and he was 14, an incident which was reported to police but didn't lead to charges being filed.

Though Utter eventually admitted to the most recent sexual encounter to police, he claimed at the time that he had been blackmailed into doing so by the victim.

Court records show that Utter's step-father was convicted of raping Utter when he was around 10 years old. Utter told police at the time that the juvenile may have been raped around the same time, and that the abuse may have spurred the girl's behavior.

As part of the SSOSA agreement, Utter will be placed under community custody for just over two years after he is released from jail. He will also have to register as a sex offender and undergo sex offender treatment for five years.

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