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February 17, 2005

Suspect's sex crimes began in early teens

Denver, Co.

As a kid, Brent J. Brents claims to have been sexually molested. When Brents was 8 years old, he said, his father was shot and killed outside a bar. He committed his first sexual assault in his early teens.

As an adult, the 35-year-old Brents, who is wanted by police on suspicion of sexually assaulting three women and two girls in Denver, has been in and out of jail for molesting children.

"It was either boys or girls; it didn't matter to him. The guy is a scum bucket - to put it mildly," said retired Denver police Detective Carrolyn Priest.

In 1988, when Brents was 18, Priest was hot on his trail because he was raping children in Denver, she said.

"At that time, he was using a ploy to get kids to go with him to find a pet, like a dog or a cat," Priest said. "He just wanted them to help him find it, and then he tried to coax them down an alley."

In February 1988, he raped a 6-year-old boy in a trash bin between the 2200 blocks of South Lincoln and South Sherman streets, according to court records. A few days later, he forced a 9-year-old girl into a garage at knifepoint before raping her. He threatened to kill her if she screamed, the records show.

As a juvenile, Brents assaulted children in Adams County and was sentenced to the Lookout Mountain School for Boys, records show.

Priest has been following the latest investigation. Her husband, Jon Priest, is commander of the Denver police homicide unit and works nights. His unit was actively involved in investigating Monday night's assault on two girls and their grandmother in the 800 block of Vine Street and the Friday assaults of a shop owner near East Sixth Avenue and Clarkson Street and a woman in a home in the 1100 block of Adams Street.

A former girlfriend of Brents said he told her that he was sexually assaulted as a child and that his father was fatally shot when he was young. She requested anonymity because she said Brents sexually assaulted her child.

The 32-year-old woman, who has three boys, said she dated Brents in August and September until she learned he had been convicted of sexual abuse of a child.

"He had told me that he went to prison for hitting a woman, but he had been convicted of sexual assault on a child," she said. "I broke off the relationship immediately."

Before learning of the conviction, the couple attended church together, she said. Even though Brents worked odd jobs and had little cash, she said he was unselfish toward her family.

"He didn't own a car, and whatever money he had, he spent it on us," she said.

But while Brents may have shown compassion at times, even toward the woman's children, he was and always will be a pedophile, Carrolyn Priest said.

"All my career I've said the same thing - you can't rehabilitate a sex criminal. I don't care what anybody says, tries or does, it's not going to work," she said. "And in my opinion, this guy has proven it."

When she was a detective, Priest was known for her ability to get close to some of the sexual-assault suspects she was investigating - sometimes getting them to admit to their crimes.

But that wasn't the case with Brents, she recalled.

"I thought he was an odd guy, other than just being a sex offender," Priest said. "He seemed anti-social, he doesn't like to relate to people on his own age level, that sort of thing.

"Maybe he didn't feel comfortable with people at his age level."

Posted by Nealus at February 17, 2005 01:49 PM

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