Judge to weigh arguments in child rape case

PANAMA CITY — A Circuit Court judge will hear arguments in a child rape case today about whether to allow testimony from people who claim the suspect also sexually assaulted them over the past 25 years.

Judge Michael Overstreet will have to decide if the facts in the other cases were similar enough to the facts in this case to admit the testimony of at least four other people who will say they were victimized by defendant Ramon Saffor, who is charged with raping a 9-year-old. Saffor’s attorneys, Gerard Virga and Rachel Seaton-Virga, have requested the jury not be allowed to hear such testimony.

The attorneys argue in a motion to suppress the testimony that prosecutor Robert Sale’s notice is too vague to allow for proper defense and doesn’t state the reason for introducing the testimony. Virga and Seaton-Virga also note that one of Saffor’s prior convictions was overturned.

Saffor has convictions for similar offenses in 1987 and 1991. In 1987, his victim was a 12-year-old girl who was staying with Saffor. In 1991, the victim was a 10-year-old boy who was staying with Saffor.

A conviction in the latest case officially would make Saffor a serial child rapist.

In the case that went to trial in 1991, Judge Dedee Costello faced a similar decision and allowed a child to testify that Saffor had tried to rape her in 1987. Saffor was convicted and Costello sentenced him to life in prison. He would have been eligible for parole in 2016.

Prison is where Saffor would have been when the latest alleged rape occurred in 2008, but the Florida Supreme Court overturned Costello’s ruling four years later, and Saffor was granted a new trial. The court’s majority ruled Costello made a mistake by allowing the second child’s testimony because the 1987 and 1991 cases “bore little resemblance to each other.”

“Not only were there obvious differences in the children’s ages and gender, but the acts took place during different time frames, at different locations, and at different times of the day. The only real similarity was that both offenses were committed while the children were asleep in bed,” Chief Justice Stephen Grimes wrote for the majority.

Justices Leander Shaw and Charles Wells disagreed. Shaw wrote in his partial dissent that “[i]n short, the record shows that Saffor used his authority to sexually assault two prepubescent children … in a similar fashion when the opportunity arose.”

Facing a new trial, Saffor pleaded no contest to lesser charges and was sentenced to time served.

Since his 1995 release from prison, Saffor has been accused of suspicion of lewd and lascivious acts on a child at least three times, and he’s been arrested and charged twice, in 2000 and again in 2004. The 2004 case was dismissed after the victim recanted before the trial.

Sale declared his intent to call another witness in this case who will testify Saffor assaulted him in 2003 when the alleged victim was under 12 years old.

Even before Saffor’s first conviction of a sex crime against a child in 1987, there’s evidence suggesting he’d already victimized other kids, according to court filings. The State Attorney’s Office also planned to present testimony from at least two other alleged victims in the 1991 case; both were under 6 years old when the alleged attacks occurred.

Jury selection begins Monday in Saffor’s trial.