Tex. rape victim furious with Oregon over inmate release
PORTLAND, Ore. -- A rape survivor in Texas was furious with Oregon Tuesday, saying the man who attacked her should have been locked up in Oregon instead of on the streets of the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
"Scared to even walk to the store," she said. "Cause you don't know who is behind you or how many people have slipped through the system."
Ft. Worth Police said last week Lynn Edward Denham, 54, beat and raped a Fort Worth woman and then attacked another woman just a mile away.
The rape victim was angry when she learned her attacker's a convicted sex offender who was wanted in Oregon for parole violation.
"It's hard to believe that a known sex offender with kidnapping charges in Oregon was still running around in Texas and they refused to take them back. It's beyond belief," she said.
Denham spent eight years behind bars in Oregon for kidnapping, raping, and sodomizing a woman in Eugene back in 1991. After his release, Denham began a pattern of skipping parole. Four times, he fled the state, was extradited back to Oregon and spent between 30 and 90 days in jail.
Then on Christmas Eve last December, Fort Worth Police arrested Denham for shoplifting. Texas investigators asked for extradition. But this time, Oregon declined.
Wednesday, Newschannel 8 spoke with Anna Richter Taylor, a spokesperson for the Governor's Office, which oversees extraditions.
"Could this have been different? Unfortunately it's hard to know in this case," Richter Taylor said.
She said the decision to extradite depends on the nature of the crime, current behavior, and money.
[...]
The head of the Oregon Parole Board, Jeremiah Stromberg, said even if Denham had been extradited back to Oregon, he would have served no more than 90 days on the parole violation.
"I would hope to see, regardless of what happens in Texas, that he is returned to Oregon and held accountable for skipping out on a fifth time," Stromberg said.
[...]
" We should take that opportunity to look at our system and to look and see are there holes are there areas where we could improve," he said.
[...]
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