Rapist Sent To Jail For Fourth Time ‘Nothing Has Seemed To Work With This Man’

A Post Falls man with a history of child rape was sentenced Thursday to up to 25 years in prison for raping a 17-year-old for the second time.

James Timothy Haas, who has said during counseling that he is attracted to adolescent girls, will not be eligible for parole for nine years.

“Nothing has seemed to work with this man,” deputy prosecutor Anne Taylor said at Thursday’s sentencing hearing. “The offenses continue.”

Haas, a 38-year-old mechanic, has a history of sexual offenses. He was convicted in 1993 for raping the same girl in Shoshone County. He received a suspended sentence of 10 years for the first offense.

In 1980, Haas was convicted of third-degree rape in Everett and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was released in 1984, but was back in prison a year later after another rape, Haynes said at the hearing.

Haas was released again in 1986, but was back in prison in 1987 for a sex offense involving a 7-year-old girl, Haynes continued.

In 1990, after his release from prison, Haas got married. At the time, his wife had a 17-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old daughter.

From 1990-92, Haas admitted in court documents, he had a sexual relationship with the older daughter while the family was living in Shoshone County.

Haas eventually was charged with lewd conduct with a minor involving the younger daughter. In 1993, he was sentenced to probation.

Haas fought the most recent rape allegation, which occurred in Coeur d’Alene.

The victim testified in Haas’ trial last month that Haas molested her about 10 times in her bedroom at the house in which she, her mother and Haas were living during August and September of 1998.

Haas said during a polygraph examination last year that the victim was having flashbacks of incidents that occurred when she was 11 years old and that the second series of assaults did not happen.

A jury found Haas guilty of second-degree rape on May 12. He has been at the Kootenai County Jail awaiting sentencing.

During Thursday’s hearing, he waved and smiled at the victim’s mother. His expression later grew somber.

He sighed loudly and rubbed his forehead when he read letters written to the court by the victim and her mother.

“I can’t undo what’s been done,” he said, and cried as he added, “It really was not my intention to destroy (the victim’s and her mother’s) lives.”

The Spokesman-Review does not reveal the names of victims of sexual assaults. Haas and his stepdaughters have different last names.

The victim’s mother testified in the trial that Haas often would stay up late to watch television after she and her daughter went to sleep.

The closest bathroom to the family room was in the victim’s room, so he sometimes would go into her room late at night.

Haas admitted during the trial that he went into the victim’s room last fall and lay beside her in bed, but said he didn’t rape her. He told her he wanted “to touch her in ways that he knew he shouldn’t” he said, but then she started hitting him and he left the room.

The jury believed the victim, however, who said Haas touched her genitals that night, as he had before.

She yelled loudly and hit him, she said, and then ran to her mother’s room and told her about the incidents.

In a letter to the court, the victim said she was fearful at night and thought she heard footsteps and that she was afraid of men as a result of the incidents.

The victim’s mother, who divorced Haas about a year ago, said she was satisfied with the sentencing.

“Justice has been done,” she said.

Haas also was found guilty of resisting arrest and assaulting an enforcement officer. When Sheriff’s Deputy Gary Dagastine went to arrest Haas in his Post Falls home last February, Haas first refused to go with him and then punched him in the face.

Cut in Spokane edition

This sidebar appeared with the story: ASSAULT James Timothy Haas was also found guilty of resisting arrest and assaulting an enforcement officer. When Sheriff’s Deputy Gary Dagastine went to arrest Haas in his Post Falls home last February, Haas first refused to go with Dagastine and then punched him in the face.