Three Sentenced in Tustin Gang Rape Case

Santa Ana - Three men who videotaped their gang-rape of an unconscious 18-year-old woman in a Tustin motel room last year were each sentenced today to six years in state prison.

Michael Alexander Clemmons, 20, of Tustin, and John Paul Foster II, 23, of Seaside in Monterey County, pleaded guilty Sept. 24, and Luster Mitchell Lewis, 21, of Irvine, pleaded guilty today as his case was to go to trial.

Each defendant pleaded guilty to four felony counts of rape, three felony counts of oral copulation and one count of sexual penetration by a foreign object, all on a person unable to resist due to an intoxicating substance.

They had faced up to 18 years in prison if convicted at trial, but under the plea agreement, Orange County Superior Court Judge Frank Fasel handed down lighter sentences.

If they stay out of trouble in prison, they could be released in three years.

The three men were partying at the Key Inn in Tustin on July 1, 2008, when the woman's boyfriend dropped her off, prosecutor Robert Mestman said. She had been drinking before she arrived at the motel and continued drinking with the men, Mestman said.

Authorities are not sure why she blacked out, but there was no evidence they drugged her, Mestman said.

After she passed out, Lewis took off the victim's clothes and moved her from the bed to the floor, where the trio raped her repeatedly, the prosecutor said.

Foster sexually assaulted her while holding the video camera and handed the device to one of the other men at one point and urinated on the woman, Mestman said. Clemmons slapped her, ordered her to wake up and even held her nose closed to try to rouse her, and Lewis did the same, the prosecutor added.

The three men became friends at Tustin High School, and Clemmons and Lewis played football at Santa Ana City College.

Someone else came across the 21-minute videotape last Dec. 28 and turned it over to Tustin police, according to the District Attorney's Office.

The victim told Fasel today that she had intended to hang out with her boyfriend and his friends at the motel, but he left her there.

Investigators never found any evidence that the boyfriend knew what was going to happen, so he was never charged, Mestman said.

He "wasn't much of a decent boyfriend," the woman said. "I don't know why I stayed with him. I had hope it would get better."

She said she only recalled waking up the next morning with her attackers, who refused to give her a ride home.

"They told me to take the bus," the tearful woman said. "I was angry and confused and I didn't know why they wouldn't help me."

At first she didn't know how to find her way home, but with help from someone, she located the right bus stop.

"Luckily I had $1.25 in my pocket to get home," she said.

While waiting for the bus, she felt her head "throbbing" with a hangover, but didn't know what had happened, she said.

The young woman said she tried to ask Lewis what happened, but suspected he wasn't giving her the whole story so turned to her then-boyfriend.

"He said he didn't want to have to choose between his friends of 12 years and a girl who he's been dating for four months," she said.

"I hate you with a passion," she said, speaking directly to the defendants. "I'm scarred for life."

All three men apologized for their crimes, but Foster offered the most detailed remorse in a statement read by his attorney, Deputy Alternate Defender Kenneth Morrison.

Foster pleaded guilty to avoid having to put the victim through a trial, Morrison said.

"John has never attempted to justify or excuse in any way anything he did that night, but there are some things that may help to explain why he acted as he did," Morrison said.

"John has dealt with deep emotional feelings of abandonment since childhood due to tragedies in his family life," he said. "As a result, he has been somewhat of a follower in order to be accepted and fit in with people who have befriended him ...

"John sincerely believes that but for the influence of alcohol and that desire to be accepted and fit in, he would not have been deluded into believing that the contact was in any way consensual and he would have stepped in and tried to stop the others when inappropriate touching began," Morrison said.

Lewis described their behavior as "inexcusable. We made some messed-up decisions that night."