Man pleads guilty in sex attack

Local News

March 3, 2011

Repeat sex offender could face up to 14 years in prison

By Rick Pfeiffer Niagara Gazette The Niagara Gazette Thu Mar 03, 2011, 08:06 PM EST

LOCKPORT — A convicted sex offender pleaded guilty Thursday to charges he sexually assaulted a woman after luring her to his home with an Internet ad.

Richard Bailey, 53, 1311 22nd St., Apt. 1, pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree sexual abuse. He had originally been charged by a grand jury with first-degree rape and predatory sexual assault.

As a result of his plea, prosecutors will drop the rape charge and a criminal sex act count.

In December, Bailey was convicted after a trial for violating the terms of his state sex offender registration and has been awaiting sentencing on that conviction.

As part of his plea deal, prosecutors have agreed to recommend that Niagara County Court Judge Matthew J. Murphy III make his sentences in the two separate cases concurrent. However, prosecutors reserved their right to ask for consecutive sentences on the sex abuse charges which could result in a 14-year prison term for Bailey.

“He understands that he could get up to 14 years if the court gives him the maximum sentence,” defense attorney Christopher Privateer said. “He has agreed to take a plea to the two (sex abuse charges) and take his chance at sentencing.”

Bailey was accused of luring a Buffalo woman to his apartment with an ad on the social network site Mocospace. He claimed to be Falls businessman looking for a secretary for a Monday through Friday gig that would pay $600 a week with a car.

When a 24-year-old woman who answered the ad and arrived at Bailey’s home on a Sunday afternoon last May, he asked her to follow him to a second floor “office.”

“When she got up there, it was actually an empty apartment with garbage strewn around,” Falls Detective Patricia McCune said at the time. “She said she began to think something wasn’t right and told (Bailey) she was going to leave.”

Before the woman could get out of the home, Bailey attacked her, raping and sodomizing her.

At the time of the attack, Bailey was a registered level one sex offender, serving a six-year term of probation for a sex offense conviction in Orleans County.

According to investigators, Bailey has a history of sex crimes that dates back more than a decade. In July 1998 he was charged by authorities in Pennsylvania with charges including indecent assault and corruption of a minor.

He had been charged with first-degree rape and second-degree criminal sex act for the attack in Orleans County. Bailey pleaded guilty, in a plea deal in that case, to a lesser charge of sexual misconduct.

An Orleans County Court judge sentenced him to six years of probation and then classified him as just a level one sex offender. Level one offenders are considered the lowest risks to commit another sex crime.

Bailey’s probation was transferred to Niagara County when he relocated to Niagara Falls in February 2008. Collins said there were concerns about him from the start.

“He was trying to solicit woman (probation department clients) in our office,” Collins said, “while he was there waiting to go into sex offender counseling.”

Bailey’s sex offender violation conviction stemmed from his use of a computer without telling his probation officer.

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