PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Nearly 7 years after a teenager was brutally raped in a downtown Portland hotel, a 64-year-old man linked to the crime through DNA was sentenced to 33 years in prison.
Curtis Clint Williams raped a 19-year-old he met at a TriMet ticket vending machine. After riding a MAX train together, Williams and the young woman went to a park before he insisted they go to where he was living, the Alder Hotel Apartments.
Once there she refused to do what he ordered her to do and screamed throughout the attack. He also forced her to swear on the Bible she wouldn’t tell anyone.
But she went to OHSU that night, and multiple DNA samples were collected.
In 2016, her rape kit was sent to a private lab in Salt Lake City as part of the Sexual Assault Kit Backlog Elimination Project. The analysis connected Williams to the crime.
The trial
This was the first case in Multnomah County to go to trial that was connected to the Sexual Assault Kit Backlog Elimination Project.
With Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Dailey presiding, a jury convicted him on 7 charges: 1st-degree rape, 1st-degree sodomy, unlawful sexual penetration and 1st-degree sexual abuse.
Senior Deputy DA Amity Girt made the case for a long sentence.
“The rape in which Mr. Williams is being sentenced for occurred (while) he was on supervision for a 1985 rape,” Girt said during sentencing.
Detective Sgt. Molly Daul, supervisor of the Portland Police Bureau’s Sex Crimes Unit, said in a statement, “It is our hope (the victim’s) fortitude will assist other sexual assault survivors in reporting and seeking justice. We will continue to pursue sexual offenders identified from our previously un-submitted SAFE kits and help those survivors in a victim centered manner.”
Multnomah County DA Rod Underhill said, “I am very proud of the work we are doing to eliminate the backlog of sexual assault kits that existed not only in Multnomah County, but several jurisdictions throughout Oregon.”
He added the DA’s office reaffirms “our commitment to survivors of rape and sexual assault. Your case is important to us. We will thoroughly investigate any sex crime allegation and prosecute defendants like Curtis Clint Williams to the fullest extent of the law.”