AKRON, Ohio — A couple who once campaigned for tougher rape laws have been accused of breaking those laws by impregnating the woman's teen-age daughter with a syringe.

        John and Narda Goff were released on a $500 bond after pleading not guilty Tuesday in Summit County Common Pleas Court to accusations they impregnated the girl with her stepfather's semen. Trial is set for Oct. 1.

        Prosecutors say paternity tests confirmed that John Goff is the father of his 18-year-old stepdaughter's nearly 2-year-old son.

        The daughter, who was not identified, said the couple monitored her menstrual cycle to gauge her most fertile time and then used syringes to inject semen.

        “I was injected so many times I couldn't count,” she said. “I had been molested for so long, I thought every family does this.”

        Her son was born Sept. 1, 1999.

        The couple, who live in nearby Stow, had worked to change Ohio's rape laws after a man accused of molesting the girl 10 years ago was acquitted in 1993. The couple lobbied lawmakers and spoke before committees, winning support of prosecutors and legislators.

        Jurors could not convict the man because under Ohio law at the time, only sexual intercourse was considered rape. The couple's campaign persuaded lawmakers to change the law in 1996 to include penetration with any object as a component to rape.

        At about the same time her mother and stepfather were meeting with state leaders, the daughter said, her stepfather began molesting her and threatened to kill her if she told.

        “He was going all around the state saying, "Don't do this to children' when at the same time he was doing it to me,” she told the Akron Beacon Journal.

        John Goff, 39, is charged with two counts of rape and sexual battery and one count of child endangering. His wife, 42, is accused of complicity to the same charges.

        The couple's attorney, Walter Madison of Akron, on Tuesday called the case “a family tragedy.”

        “The family has suffered a lot through all of this, and they are awaiting their day in court,” he said, declining further comment.

        Now engaged and working at a pizza shop, the daughter said she received little education and cannot read or write. She said she attended four elementary schools and was pulled out for home-schooling, but did housework instead.

        She reported her allegations to Stow police in January, the same month she moved in with her fiance's family in Ravenna.

        She has given her son to the county and hopes an aunt will adopt him. She said she would consider the boy her cousin.

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