Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Rape victim blesses attacker's plea deal

She says she had a Christian duty not only to stop Jessie James Orshal for the violent attack but also to help him. He got eight years instead of life.

By JAMAL THALJI
Published May 16, 2006

NEW PORT RICHEY - Again and again that night, Jessie James Orshal raped her. Trapped in her car, it went on for three hours. He said he had a gun. He wrapped his hands around her throat. Tell anyone, he told her, and he'd find her. He'd kill her.

That was her October 2004 ordeal, the victim told the court Monday. Now she knows why that brutal assault happened:

It was meant to.

"God wanted that man to be stopped," she said, "and he knew I was the one woman strong enough to stop him."

Stop him, but not put him away for life.

The 64-year-old New Port Richey woman agreed to a plea deal that calls for her attacker, Orshal, to spend eight years in prison.

It could have been life, had a jury convicted him at a trial that was set to start this week. But the defense sought a deal, and the victim blessed it.

"It's at her urging that we've reached this understanding," said Assistant State Attorney Mike Halkitis, division director of the West Pasco office.

The victim, whose identity is being withheld by the St. Petersburg Times because of the nature of the crime, said she feels a sense of Christian duty.

Not just to stop Orshal, but to help him, too.

"I pray for his soul," she said. "I love him because God loves him. I pray for him if he is not stopped."

The 23-year-old Hudson man pleaded no contest to second-degree sexual battery and was adjudicated guilty. He will be declared a sex offender, undergo counseling and five years of probation after prison.

As she read a statement to the court, the victim revealed allegations Orshal committed two more sexual assaults when he was 13 and 19. State records show he was convicted of two misdemeanor batteries in 1996.

"I ask the court to please protect us from him," she said, "and to grant him the help his troubled soul needs."

It was Oct. 17, 2004, when the victim said Orshal asked for a ride home from a New Port Richey bar. She didn't know him well, but others she knew vouched for him. He asked to go to Hudson Beach, and it was there her ordeal started.

"For almost three hours that man terrorized, brutalized and raped me over and over again," she told the court. "I begged. I cried. I pleaded with him not to do it, not to do that to me."

Her resistance was met by force and threats. Beeping the horn didn't work. She ripped an earring off him and stuffed it between seat cushions.

"Because if I died," she said, "I wanted DNA evidence to prove he was my killer."

About 2:45 a.m. a Pasco sheriff's deputy spotted the vehicle. The deputy walked up and the victim jumped out.

According to a sheriff's report, after Orshal was read his rights, he told deputies he was drunk and didn't remember much of the night.

In court, he made no statement, save to answer Circuit Judge Joe Bulone's questions.

The victim said she hopes Orshal can be rehabilitated. But that might not happen.

Under the Jimmy Ryce Act, the state could have Orshal declared a sexually violent prisoner and have him committed against his will to a treatment program after prison.

"I know that," the victim said. "But that's his problem. Not mine."

Times researcher Angie Drobnic Holan contributed to this report.

[Last modified May 16, 2006, 01:50:15]