'They're failing': Girl's mother furious after sex abuse suspect released with no bail
STAYTON, Ore. (KATU) — The mother of an alleged sex abuse victim in Stayton blasted the Marion County jail Saturday for releasing a suspect accused of grabbing her daughter with no bail on the day of his arrest.
"It's infuriating," said the woman KATU is calling "Emily," who didn't want to publicly reveal her real name. "They're failing. I feel like it's careless."
She also said the jail didn't tell her or her daughter the suspect was released.
The jail can hold 415 inmates at a time, a spokesman said. A graph from the Marion County Sheriff's Office says an average of around 13 to 18 inmates were released daily from June 2018 to June 2019 due to overcrowding.
Stayton police said a stranger tried to sexually assault Emily's daughter on a private trail near North 7th Avenue and East Hollister Street on July 24.
Emily said she and her daughter are terrified she may run into him again because he works at a local grocery store.
"She was over here trying to pick blackberries. And he came and approached her and grabbed her," Emily said while standing near the trail Saturday. "And she screamed to try to scare him and to get him off and it worked. So he released her and then he took off and then she took off out of there."
After that Emily said her daughter called 911. A few days later police brought in an artist from Portland who worked with the girl on a composite sketch of the suspect.
"It's kind of nerve-wracking in a way, 'cause you have to live it all over again," Emily said.
On Wednesday, while she and her daughter were grocery shopping at a nearby Safeway, Emily said they saw the suspect, who officers identified as 31-year-old Timothy Newton. He's a store employee.
"My daughter came over to me. She said, 'Mom, that's him,'" Emily explained. "So I went to go walk by to get a name tag and I didn't confront him. ... We left and she was very shaken up. She said her adrenaline was going, her heart was racing, just seeing him again."
Emily called the police and the next morning Newton was arrested.
He was booked into the Marion County jail on suspicion of third-degree sex abuse and released the same day without paying bail. A spokesman for the sheriff's office, which runs the jail, said it was at capacity and Newton was released as part of a management plan. Newton is due in court on Sept. 19.
"I feel like the system is failing on many levels," Emily said. "They can't follow through on the bare basics to even notify people that this is happening."
The sheriff's office said crime victims can register in a program called VINE Link to be told when a suspect is released from custody. Emily said they weren't aware of it but they would be signing up.
A sheriff's office report for June said sex crimes were the most common charges inmates at the jail faced.
KATU has covered multiple stories recently in which suspects accused of serious crimes were released from the jail with no bail soon after being arrested.
In a terrifying incident caught on dashcam video a week ago, a mom swerved at the last second to dodge a wrong-way driver on I-5 in Salem. Police said the suspect was so drunk he had to be taken to the hospital, where he's accused of fighting with staff members. He was booked into the Marion County jail and released with no bail the same day.
In June deputies said a man crashed into a parked car near Salem before being arrested for DUII for the third time. He was booked into the Marion County jail and released for free the next day.
In April a KATU reporter approached a suspect facing more than a dozen sex crime charges against minors after the jail let him out for the second time with no bail.