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Charges stayed against elderly sex offender

A third trial against Anton Paul Rapati will not go ahead after the Crown decided to stay the charges against the 86-year-old man.

A third trial against Anton Paul Rapati will not go ahead after the Crown decided to stay the charges against the 86-year-old man.

Two days of trial set to begin today will not proceed as the Crown opted to stay a charge of indecent assault against Rapati.

A stay of proceedings gives the Crown a one-year gap where they can choose to restart proceedings, but is generally an indication they are dropping the case.

Rapati is currently serving a 25-month sentence for convictions he received in February and early this month and is facing deportation proceedings when he is released.

The news of the stay first broke on an Edmonton crime website, which also posted a letter Crown prosecutor Gregory Marchant sent to the alleged victim in the case.

In the letter, Marchant wrote the Crown had only the witness' uncorroborated statements to present as evidence and that he did not believe he would obtain a conviction.

"There are lots of inconsistencies leading to, as I said in the letter, no likelihood of a conviction," Marchant said in an interview.

Earlier conviction

Rapati was convicted in February of three sexual assault charges dating from the mid-1970s.

In that case, Rapati faced several other charges from a total of four alleged victims, but Justice Sterling Sanderman only found one victim's evidence strong enough to warrant a conviction.

While hearing the case, Sanderman said historical sexual assault cases are always difficult, because memories have faded making proving the Crown's case difficult.

"All of our memories are imperfect and over time we accept some things as real memories that may not be true."

Marchant said the same factors at work in that case were at play in this incident as well.

"As Justice Sanderman said, the biggest difficulty in prosecuting historical sexual assaults is that without some corroborative evidence all you have is the evidence of a complainant and the problems associated with what the mind does over 30 years."

In the February case Rapati was convicted on the basis of the victim's evidence, as well as testimony of another witness, which strengthened the case.

The victim in the February case was abused over several years in the mid-1970s. Rapati gained the trust of a local family and abused the boy by encouraging him to touch him sexually and perform oral sex on him.

Those charges were first laid in 1991 and Rapati faced a preliminary inquiry before fleeing to Holland for 15 years.

Two more victims came to light during Rapati's time out of the country.

Rapati pleaded guilty to one count of indecent assault in connection with one of those victims earlier this month.

In that case he admitted a young boy touched his penis after Rapati told him to reach into his pocket where he had a surprise for the young boy.

Rapati also gave the boy $5 to inspect his crotch, which Rapati used as an opening to further molest the boy.

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