This time, no leniency in court for child sex predator

EVERETT — An Everett man was shown mercy in 2015, when a judge sentenced him for the car crash that killed his son.

On Thursday, when another judge sent him back to prison for giving drugs to Snohomish County boys and molesting them, John Anthony Alves had little to say in court.

"I just want to ask the victims for forgiveness," Alves said.

Alves, 36, was sentenced to at least 14½ years behind bars. He could spend the rest of his life in prison if a sentence review board finds him unfit for release.

Alves abused three boys shortly after serving out a 15-month sentence for causing the death of his son, Josiah, 7, in an impromptu car race. Alves was high on marijuana when he slammed into a van on Evergreen Way. The judge granted Alves some leniency in 2015.

"I know perfectly well there is no sentence I can give you that likely will come close to the sentence you have given yourself," Judge George Appel told him.

Two years later, in May 2017, Alves tried to outrun Everett police in a truck with a stolen trailer, court papers show. Officers caught him in a yard on Maple Street, hiding in shrubs. He begged police to shoot him. He was taken back to jail.

In June 2017, a family member reported he'd seen photos of nude boys on Alves' phone. Police confronted Alves as he worked on a car in his garage on 16th Street. He denied having a phone. Then he reluctantly pulled one out of his pocket, but claimed it wasn't his.

A search warrant later showed the phone held hundreds of sexual images of boys younger than 12. Word got out. Parents started talking to their kids about Alves — opening up a dark, secret side of his life.

Over a series of police interviews, one boy recounted being drugged, pushed into a bathroom and raped by Alves at an Everett motel in early 2017, among other examples of sexual abuse. He was 10.

The mother of another boy, 9, asked her son if Alves had ever touched him. The child, who is on the autism spectrum, told her about four different times when Alves sexually touched him in 2016, and told him to stay quiet about it. Alves would give the boy video games and candy, charging papers say.

Police couldn't find Alves for the remainder of 2017. He was caught hiding in a crawl space at a five-bedroom Stanwood home in January. He'd been living in the home with a teen boy, who had been missing for about as long as Alves. The boy reported, at first, that he hadn't been hurt. His mother later found video of Alves sexually abusing the child. The boy — who lived through major trauma and instability in his own home — told police he considered Alves to be a boyfriend.

He was 13.

The child went on to say he'd used marijuana and methamphetamine since he was 11. A Department of Corrections investigation noted that, as of this month, the boy had escaped every home he'd been placed in by Child Protective Services, and that he's currently a runaway.

As the investigation went on, a video was discovered on Alves' phone, allegedly showing his girlfriend, 27, sexually abusing yet another boy in his early teens in August 2016. Police interviewed her in jail in June. She said Alves made her do it, that he recorded the video and that she was "using a lot of drugs and does not remember much from that time period," charging papers say.

The woman is charged with second-degree rape of a child. She was still in jail Friday.

Alves pleaded guilty in August to attempting to elude police, possessing child pornography, two counts of first-degree child molestation and another felony crime for abusing the teen in Stanwood.

His public defender, Rachel Forde, spoke on his behalf in court Thursday. She argued that Alves had shown remorse and taken responsibility for what he'd done.

"I've sat in a jail cell when he's crying over this," Forde said. "This is not something easy, or that he's taking lightly."

Forde said her client's warped, dysfunctional thoughts were exacerbated by a drug relapse, and the tragedy of losing his son led his family life to spiral out of control. Alves whispered into her ear.

"Unfortunately, Mr. Alves is also a victim of sexual abuse," Forde continued. "This is something that he struggled with, he compartmentalized, he buried."

Superior Court Judge David Kurtz went with a prosecutor's suggestion, handing down a prison term at the midpoint of the standard range.

In a letter sent to the court, meanwhile, the mother of the autistic boy had hoped for the sternest sentence possible.

"When I put my child to bed, I ask myself, 'Why my sweet little boy?'" she wrote in the letter, addressed to Alves. "Why hurt a child who already struggles with life? … I hope as the doors lock shut night after night and you lay down on that cold cot, you realize that what you did was sick and wrong."