Saturday, May 20, 2000
Man guilty of raping girl, 11
By Sheila McLaughlin
The Cincinnati Enquirer
LEBANON — Prosecutors ended their losing streak Friday in the case of a Lebanon man accused of molesting two teen-agers and a disabled 19-year-old woman three years ago.
For months, prosecutors' attempts to convict Keith Larison were sidelined by a judge who acquitted the 45-year-old trucker of raping the 19-year-old for lack of evidence and ordered misdemeanor sex charges dropped because the legal time limit to try the case had expired.
But Friday, a Warren County jury branded Mr. Larison a rapist for molesting an 11-year-old girl in 1996 and 1997 when he lived with the girl's mother.
Jurors convicted him of two counts of rape, after Judge Neal Bronson earlier dismissed a charge of felonious sexual penetration, saying the offense didn't exist as a crime when the alleged incident occurred in 1997.
Defense lawyer Greg Demos had argued that the girl, who is now 14, made up the accusations because she didn't like Mr. Larison and wanted him out of her family's residence.
She resented Mr. Larison's relationship with her mother as well as his strict discipline, which often included corporal punishment, Mr. Demos said.
He questioned why it took the girl three years to report the abuse.
But Warren County Assistant Prosecutor Joanne Hash said the accusations surfaced during psy chotherapy in 1999, when Mr. Larison was no longer living with the girl's family.
“She came forward after he was out of her life. The girl has no motive,” Ms. Hash told the jury in closing arguments.
Mr. Larison still faces trial on three more sex charges involving a third girl.
Mr. Larison, who has a history of convictions on burglary, escape and robbery in California, Colorado and Ohio, was indicted on a dozen sex charges in December, including five counts each of rape and sexual imposition.
The alleged incidents, in Franklin and Lebanon, involve girls ages 11 to 14 and the 19-year-old woman, who is speech- and hearing-impaired.
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