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April 06, 2005
Former Customs Inspector Pleads Guilty To Child Molestation
Fiancee Vows To Marry Abuser Following Prison Sentence
SAN DIEGO -- A 45-year-old former U.S. Customs inspector who abused a female relative for years, starting when she was a young child, will spend at least 16 years in state prison.
Maynard "Scott" McFarland, who was sentenced Tuesday to a 32-year prison term, pleaded guilty Jan. 31 to four counts of child molestation.
McFarland will have to serve at least 16 years of the sentence as part of a plea agreement in which prosecutors dropped charges and chose not to file others that could have resulted in a term of hundreds of years. The plea bargain also spared the victim from having to testify.
The victim, now 21, told Superior Court Judge George W. Clarke that the defendant subjected her to 10 years of molestation and rape in San Diego and eight more years of sexual abuse in another state.
The woman urged the judge to give McFarland the maximum 32-year sentence warranted by the charges that were filed against the defendant.
"My sentence is as many years as I am alive," she told the judge.
Clarke agreed, telling McFarland that some crimes are so "morally reprehensible" that they cry out for the maximum term.
According to court documents, McFarland called the victim last November and told her he couldn't explain the abuse but apologized for it.
Authorities said the investigation began last summer, when the woman called San Diego police to say McFarland had molested her from 1983 until 1994.
The victim told police the abuse began shortly after she was born and continued until she was 9 or 10 years old, when her mother interrupted an incident of abuse.
Defense attorney Angela Bartosik unsuccessfully argued for a lesser prison sentence because McFarland had been law-abiding for the past 12 years.
The defendant's fiancee, Beverly Wawruck, said she was in love with him and planned to marry him when he gets out of prison.
McFarland was arrested in December in North Dakota, where he worked as an inspector at the Canadian border.
The defendant, who spent much of his career working at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, apologized for the abuse and promised never to return to the criminal justice system.
Deputy District Attorney Catherine Stephenson called the case against McFarland "one of the most egregious molest cases I have seen."
The defendant was charged only with molestations from 1989 to 1993 because of the statute of limitations in such cases, Stephenson said.
Posted by Nealus at April 6, 2005 07:16 PM
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