New York Tabloid Slams API Letter-Writer (in National News) Top Dog Guaranteed Top Education (in Bay Area News) Get Ready for Cyberwars (in Business) Click. Click. (in A&E) The Flame and the Street Name (in Opinion)

Washington Rapist Sentenced

David M. Dailey is escorted from a Spokane County Superior courtroom, Tuesday, July 24. AP photo

Japanese victims put attackers behind bars

By John K. Wiley/AP

David M. Dailey allegedly kidnapped and raped Japanese exchange students because he felt their cultural traditions would make them reluctant to report the crimes. But he, and two others, were wrong: All three quickly entered guilty pleas after their five female victims returned to the United States to give pretrial deposition.

Dailey was sentenced to 25 years in prison on July 24 by Spokane County Superior Court Judge Linda Tompkins.

Prior to sentencing, a tearful Dailey said he was “ashamed.”

“I hurt two people by my acts. I could never, ever take that back,” he said.

Dailey, 38, apologized to the women and their families and asked for forgiveness.

Tompkins said the sentence, which had the approval of the victims and their lawyers as well as prosecutors, “is a fair resolution to allow the young women to move forward and put this behind them.”

Dailey had pleaded guilty to kidnapping, rape and assault charges in incidents involving young Japanese college students studying in Spokane, Wash., last fall. He was a member of a bondage and sadomasochism ring called the Spokane Power Exchange.

He pleaded guilty in May to three counts of second-degree kidnapping and one count of first-degree rape and two counts of witness intimidation after three Mukogawa Fort Wright Institute students were abducted in November.

He also admitted to two counts of attempted second-degree kidnapping and two counts of second-degree assault by torture stemming from an incident in October, in which two Eastern Washington University exchange students were assaulted with a stun gun before escaping their captors.

A co-defendant, Edmund F. Ball III, 40, also pleaded guilty to similar charges stemming from the Nov. 11 assaults. His sentencing was delayed after his lawyers filed motions to change his plea and go to trial.

Spokane County will fight that motion, the prosecutor’s office said.

Dailey originally was charged with more serious counts.

One count of first-degree rape was dropped and three counts of first-degree kidnapping were reduced to second-degree kidnapping as part of the plea agreement. If convicted of the original counts, he could have faced life in prison.

“I think it was a fair resolution,” Dailey’s attorney, Doug Phelps, said. “The defense was successful in that he got 25 years against a possible life sentence.”

Phelps told Tompkins that Dailey’s intervention may have saved the women’s lives.

After the crime “there was some talk the girls should be killed,” Phelps said after the sentencing hearing. “Mr. Dailey said, ‘That is absolutely not going to happen,’” and the women were released a short time later.

A third defendant, Lana Vickery, pleaded guilty in March to single counts of first-degree kidnapping and first-degree rape. She was sentenced in June to nearly 16 years in prison.

She told detectives she was present when Dailey and Ball sexually assaulted two Mukogawa Fort Wright students in the basement of Dailey’s Spokane Valley home, Nov. 11. A third student was abducted but released.

Mukogawa Fort Wright is a branch of Mukogawa Women’s University near Kobe, Japan. Students spend a quarter learning English and U.S. culture at the Spokane campus.