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Convicted Molester Begins Parole : Crime: Kyle Hochstraser reports in Palmdale. His victim says she’s sentenced to a ‘lifetime of nightmares.’

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TIMES STAFF WRITERS

Kyle Hochstraser, known as Richard Streate when he entered the state prison in Tehachapi a year and a half ago, was released Wednesday and immediately reported to his parole officer in Palmdale, three years after molesting his goddaughter, a former Newbury Park girl.

Meanwhile, Desiray Bartak, the 14-year-old victim, said in Los Angeles that it doesn’t matter what name he uses; she said she knows him as the predator who abused her trust to steal her innocence.

He went to prison, but he’s the one who got off easy, she said during a news conference at her lawyer’s Wilshire Boulevard office.

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“Richard Streate has served his time, but I am sentenced to a lifetime of nightmares he caused me when he murdered my childhood,” Desiray said. In the nightmares, he appears in a blond wig and red lipstick, and she is always running from him, she added.

She told reporters she wants the world to know how he crept into her bed when she was 10, making her “perform sexual acts that only a husband and wife would do.” If the world knows her story, she said, maybe he won’t be able to molest another child.

And, she said, the criminal justice system let her down.

“I’m very angry at the justice system, that they let him out,” she said. “I’m mad at the judge for not giving him the maximum sentence.”

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Desiray was molested twice, during the July 4 weekend in 1990, and again in August, 1991. After Hochstraser was charged in June, 1992, Desiray, her mother, Wayanne Kruger, and her attorney Gloria Allred pleaded with Lancaster Superior Court Judge Haig Kehiayan to impose the maximum eight-year sentence. Instead, he sentenced the defendant in 1993 to the minimum, three-year sentence.

Prison work and good-behavior credits further reduced his sentence by half.

But Desiray, in her own way, struck back. In January she won a $2-million verdict in an unprecedented lawsuit against her molester.

Although it is now common for victims of sexual abuse to sue their abusers, Desiray’s case was believed to be the first where a child victim sued and prevailed. So far, the case hasn’t brought her a dime, but it had earned her national recognition as a symbol for children’s rights.

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“I had to grow up,” Desiray said, appearing poised and gravely serious at the news conference. “I had to become an adult.”

Desiray and her mother have moved to Northern California, and have obtained a restraining order to keep Hochstraser from coming within 35 miles of them.

The 30-year-old Hochstraser has found a job in Palmdale, moved in with a relative “in a remote location,” and will be closely monitored, state parole officials said.

He has two weeks to register as a sex offender at the Antelope Valley Sheriff’s Station. Neighbors with children will be notified about his record. And, he will not be living with his wife and his own children because the terms of his parole forbid contact with minors.

Hochstraser also will be required to attend an outpatient clinic for parolees, meeting weekly with a psychiatrist, said Jerry Di Maggio, a regional parole administrator. He will be barred from places where minors congregate. “If we catch him around a school, he will go to jail,” Di Maggio said.

On Wednesday, just knowing Hochstraser was free was enough to jangle Desiray’s nerves.

“I’m scared,” she told reporters.

“It was very hard for me to get to sleep last night, knowing he’s getting out today. I felt as though I had my life back. Now, I’m back in the same predicament I was in two years ago.”

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