Two former Bainbridge High School students are facing charges of sexually assaulting younger female classmates after a teenage drinking party last summer at Pritchard Park.
One of the accused was a high school senior at the time of the alleged assaults and the other was a college student. The victims were both 15.
The two cases are part of a large number of sexual assaults that have been reported to the Bainbridge Island Police Department in recent months.
According to Bainbridge police, authorities have seen a spike in the number of sexual assaults that have been reported to the department since last year.
Bainbridge Island Police Chief Matthew Hamner said his department has investigated 12 cases since the start of 2016 that involve 13 victims — all students at Bainbridge High.
There were nine cases, involving 10 victims, investigated last year. This year, there have been two incidents with three victims. “And we’re only four months into 2017,” Hamner said.
By contrast, there were only three sexual assault cases in the combined years of 2014-15.
The recent cases, according to court documents, involved victims who are younger teens who were allegedly assaulted after they had been given alcohol and prescription drugs, usually the sedative Xanax, at social gatherings of high schoolers.
Two of the cases stem from the same summer beach party at Eagle Harbor last year, and have resulted in felony criminal charges. Both of those cases are expected to go to trial in the coming months.
Former students charged
Issac James Holloway, 19, and Daniel Mark Locascio, 20, are both awaiting trial in Kitsap County Superior Court.
Holloway graduated from BHS in 2016, Locascio in 2015.
Authorities say both were at a beach party at Pritchard Park on Aug. 4, 2016 and eventually left with the girls to go to a home near Winslow, where the assaults allegedly occurred.
Holloway has been charged with third-degree rape in Kitsap County Superior Court and has entered a plea of not guilty.
Police claim Holloway met the 15-year-old girl at the party and later gave her Xanax after they left and went to the home just south of Wyatt Way.
The victim told police that they had been kissing, but Holloway wanted to go further and held her down and started grabbing at her.
The victim said she told him, “No, no, no. I don’t want to do this,” and asked him again to stop because he was hurting her.
She also said she did not have the strength to fight back because of the alcohol and Xanax that she had consumed.
According to a statement of probable cause in the case, Holloway took off his clothes and allegedly told her, “Sex is fun, it’s fine.”
He then added, “No, it will be fine. I do it a lot and am good at it.”
The victim told him to stop but Holloway continued.
When interviewed by police, Holloway initially said he didn’t remember much from what happened at the home, but said they “were just making out” and did not have sex.
Holloway has denied giving the girl Xanax.
He also told a Bainbridge detective that he thought the victim was making up the story to improve her reputation.
Police said they talked to five witnesses, however, who claimed they saw Holloway with Xanax in the past; some said they saw him at parties giving the pills to others.
One girl who had been at the gathering told police she saw Holloway put a Xanax in the victim’s mouth before they left to be alone.
Police also found that Holloway purchased a Plan B birth control bill using his mother’s rewards card number at the Bainbridge Rite Aid two days after the alleged rape. Holloway’s debit card was used for the purchase, police said.
Authorities also found that Holloway and another teen met with a friend of the rape victim that same day and gave her friend the Plan B pill.
Holloway denied that account. Investigators attempted to talk to him again in early January in Bellingham, where he was a student, but he wasn’t home.
When he was reached via phone by police, he said he did not want to talk and hung up. Holloway’s attorney did not respond this week to a request for comment from the Review.
Holloway’s trial is set for June 26 in Kitsap County Superior Court.
The alleged rape went unreported until Oct. 6, when a friend of the BHS student told an administrator at the high school that she was worried about the girl. When the girl’s mother went to the high school, she was told that her daughter had been raped on the same night as her friend during the summer.
One party, two assaults
In the other related Bainbridge case pending in court, Locascio was charged with third-degree child molestation. He has pleaded not guilty.
Police said he met his alleged victim at the Pritchard Park party, and had left the gathering with her and another girl for the same Winslow-area home where Holloway had taken the other teen victim.
The other girl, a 17-year-old, was driving the car and said Locascio and the alleged victim were in the back seat and were “making out.”
The witness said she left after they arrived at the home but came back to the car an hour later to retrieve an item she had left behind.
She said the girl had her shirt off and Locascio was on top of her. The girl later told police she never consented to having sex with Locascio.
She also gave police text messages from Locascio: “I hope i didnt pressure you at all; i wasnt sure if you really wanted 2 to or not,” and “I honestly didnt mean to be pushy like that, i wasnt sure if you wanted to or not.”
When questioned by police, Locascio generally denied having sex with the girl and said he was “a bit foggy the day after. But I don’t remember having sex with her.”
Police noted that Locascio had also been questioned by police in Pullman as a suspect in a rape allegation in September 2015 while he was a student at Washington State University.
In that case, the victim was at a fraternity party and said she had been drinking before the assault.
When questioned by Pullman police, Locascio admitted having consensual sex at the party but was a “little fuzzy with the details.”
The victim eventually decided not to pursue the case further and it was subsequently closed by police, according to court documents.
Locascio’s trial is scheduled to begin June 12. Tim Kelly, his attorney, declined this week to talk about the case.
Reasons elusive for increase
Hamner, Bainbridge’s chief of police, wouldn’t speculate about why the number of sexual assault cases has risen so dramatically in the past 16 months, or say what common themes may have emerged from the incidents.
“I won’t go down the path of victim blaming,” Hamner said.
He did say, though, that the presence of adults at teenage gatherings could have a positive impact.
“Having adult supervision at parties is very important,” Hamner said. “So when somebody finds themselves in a bad situation, they’ve got a way to get help. Just by an adult being there definitely helps prevent some of this.
“People should watch the drinks they drink to make sure somebody isn’t giving them something,” he added. “Make sure the people you associate with are people who would protect you.”
Alcohol and prescription drugs can also make people act differently, lower inhibitions and put people in a vulnerable position, he said.
Hamner also noted such cases leave a wide swath of ruined lives.
“It’s really tough when we investigate these cases, to learn of these things. We don’t like to see the pain that people go through,” he said. “It’s devastating and heartbreaking. It’s a very depressing and sad experience for everyone involved. It’s terrible.”
That despair is clear in a victim impact statement submitted by the father of one of the 15-year-olds who was assaulted.
“This is an extremely difficult letter to write,” the father said in his statement to the court. “To describe accurately and completely the initial, ongoing and future impacts of having your 15-year-old daughter enticed with alcohol, drugged and forcibly raped is beyond impossible to transcribe into a single statement.
“The ongoing sadness, pain, depression, anger, fear, and numerous other emotions were nearly consuming for all of us,” he added. “My daughter said to me in tears not too long after Oct. 6 that everything she had ever known now seemed so far away.”
The assault has made his daughter uncontrollably anxious, fearful, sad and physically ill, he wrote, to the point that the family obtained a protection order against her alleged assailant and has paid thousands of dollars on therapy for the girl.
“We as a family and individuals will continue to speak out against this crime of rape and battle against this insidious type of date rape involving alcohol and drugs,” the father wrote.
“Young men seriously need to know that treating another human being, a woman, this way will not be tolerated by our families, communities and the law. Young men, and all men, need to know that rape victims will not be silent, and the law will enforce serious penalties rather than thinking nothing will happen or a good lawyer will get them off the hook. The root causes of these incidents also need to be examined and changes made within men’s minds and hearts to keep their moral compass from deviating. Otherwise these sexual assaults will continue and will eventually reach epidemic levels.”
Case numbers could be low
Not all of the sexual assault investigations on Bainbridge in recent months have led to criminal prosecutions.
Hamner noted that the Kitsap County Prosecutor’s Office declined to pursue five of the 2016 cases investigated by Bainbridge police.
One declined case involved a suspect who was charged with sex crimes in another state. Hamner wouldn’t give details about the other cases that were not prosecuted, and directed questions on those to the Kitsap County Prosecutor’s Office.
Hamner also couldn’t give additional details on investigations that are still progressing.
“I would rather the [newspaper] story not be done, but sadly, very sadly, it’s the reality of what’s occurring,” he said.
The actual number of sexual assaults on Bainbridge in recent years can’t be pinned down precisely by police, though Hamner said the Bainbridge Island Police Department investigates all reports of sexual assault it receives.
“Do I believe, as chief, there are other sexual assaults that are not reported? Absolutely,” he said.
