I wonder how many lawyers or people in the legal profession tried to cover up this incident? Is this endemic of the culture of the legal profession?
Former lawyer convicted in sexual assault on girl
rockymountainnews.com
William J. Hunsaker Jr. testified in his defense at the original trial and retrial.STORY TOOLS
Email this story | Print By Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News
June 14, 2006
A former Wheat Ridge lawyer was convicted Tuesday in Larimer County District Court for the sexual assault of a girl whose mother he met over the Internet.
William J. Hunsaker Jr. had been tried initially in December in the alleged assault of both the girl and her brother, but a jury acquitted him on charges relating to the boy and deadlocked on the counts relating to his sister. His retrial, stemming from allegations concerning the girl, started with jury selection June 5 and went to the jury Tuesday afternoon.
Jurors were out for about 90 minutes before returning with guilty verdicts on a count of sexual assault on a child, a class-four felony, and pattern of abuse, which is a class-three felony.
Hunsaker could receive a term of up to 18 years in prison when sentenced Aug. 3.
Hunsaker, 35, testified in his own defense at both the first and second trial. He insisted that although his admittedly X-rated Internet correspondence with the children's mother led to sexual relations between the adults in early 2003, he never touched the boy and girl - at the time age 9 and 11, respectively.
The boy did not testify at the first or second trial. The girl, now 14, testified at both.
Hunsaker joined his father's Wheat Ridge law firm in 2002, where he specialized in personal injury cases.
Police allege that Hunsaker used his relationship with the victim's mother, a divorced Fort Collins resident, to gain access to her daughter and son.
That woman, a 33-year-old whose name is being withheld to protect her children's identity, pleaded guilty in January 2004 to incest and offering her children for sex. In exchange for that plea and an agreement to testify against Hunsaker, she was sentenced to 22 years in prison. |
