Tearful Victim Testifies on Prison Rape

HANFORD, Calif. —  In graphic and tearful testimony, former inmate Eddie Dillard told a jury here Tuesday that he knew the fate that awaited him when guards transferred him to the cell of Corcoran State Prison’s notorious “Booty Bandit.”

Telling jurors that his account was too painful to recall in every detail, Dillard said he pleaded with Officer Anthony Sylva that inmate Wayne Robertson was his documented enemy and a well-known rapist as Sylva led him to Robertson’s cell that day in March 1993.

He said Sylva ignored his pleas and watched the cell door clang shut, vowing that he would check out Dillard’s claim and if true, come back to relocate him.

But Dillard said no one returned and he was raped over and over during the next few days.

“I can’t describe it,” Dillard told the Superior Court jury, breaking down in tears. “Half of it I don’t even want to remember. . . . I just remember him raping me again.”

Sylva and colleagues Robert Decker, Joe Sanchez and Dale Brakebill are accused of aiding and abetting the rape of Dillard in the first trial of Corcoran guards in nearly a decade. Prosecutors allege that one of their motives was to punish Dillard, who had kicked a female guard at another prison.

The officers deny knowing about Robertson’s history of raping at least a dozen cellmates and contend they had no ill motive in carrying out the cell transfer.

During his three hours on the witness stand Tuesday, Dillard said that after the first attack he told Sanchez that his life was in danger, but was left in Robertson’s cell to endure another attack.

“[Sanchez] told me, ‘You can hit a woman, but you can’t hit him,’ ” Dillard said. “He laughed like it was a joke.”

Dillard walked into the courtroom Tuesday only moments after Robertson, 6-foot-2 and 220 pounds, head shaved but for a small ponytail, was led from the witness stand in manacles. Robertson, 42, had just finished testifying that the guards brought Dillard to him to “teach him how to do his time.”

The contrast between the two men--once members of the same Compton gang--could not have been more stark. Dillard, 130 pounds and swallowed up by a baggy white knit sweater, looked like a skinny teenager.

When he spoke, Dillard’s voice came out almost squeaky. At one point, the judge ordered a break in the trial when the 29-year-old man began to sob and couldn’t compose himself.

Just 10 feet away, the four officers sat in a row with heads bowed as Dillard recounted the rape.

Sgt. Decker then shook his head and smirked, and defense attorney Wayne Ordos leaned forward to the officers and questioned the sincerity of Dillard’s tears. “It’s show time,” Ordos said, out of earshot of the jury.

Dillard traced his troubles with Robertson to 1991, when they first met at Tehachapi State Prison. Robertson was in for first-degree murder; Dillard had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for his role in a drive-by shooting.

Even though they had belonged to the same gang, Dillard said, they hadn’t known each other on the street because of their age difference. He said that shortly after their meeting Robertson asked that they share a cell and made sexual advances. Dillard said he later caught Robertson leering at him in the shower and the two got into a fight, Robertson knocking him back with one punch. After that, prison reports first documented the inmates as enemies.

The fact that they were enemies should have precluded Robertson and Dillard from sharing a cell at Corcoran, according to corrections policy.

Dillard said he repeatedly told the officers about the bad blood between them, but to no avail. He said he was locked in a cell with Dillard for three days before he was able to flee when the cell door finally opened.

He suggested that officers then orchestrated a cover-up, which included canceling his doctor’s appointment for a rape exam, spreading the word among other inmates that he was an easy mark, and pressuring him to drop his complaint to corrections officials in Sacramento. Dillard testified that Decker called him out of his new cell three months later and said that if he didn’t drop the complaint, he could “put me back in the cell with Robertson.”

Dillard said he then dropped the complaint for a time.

Defense attorneys sought to portray Dillard as a malcontent who was quick to file complaints against guards.

During cross-examination, Ordos, who represents Sanchez, suggested that any sexual activity between the inmates was consensual. He pointed out that Dillard went to the doctor numerous times in the months after the incident and never mentioned a rape.

The trial is expected to last three more weeks. If convicted, the officers face up to nine years in prison.