Man pleads guilty to child rape
A former Airway Heights Corrections Center corrections officer pleaded guilty Wednesday to two counts of third-degree child rape that began through an encounter in an Internet chat room.
Richard Leon Welty, 35, will get almost three years in prison if a judge follows the recommendation of Deputy Prosecutor Ed Hay and defense attorney Chris Phelps. Welty will be sentenced on Sept. 20.
The deal calls for Welty to receive a maximum-standard 34 months for having sex repeatedly with a girl who was 13 when the abuse began in August 2002. Court documents that Welty acknowledged are accurate say he had sex with the girl six to 10 times, until she was 15.
The documents say two other girls were involved in the abuse, although Welty didn’t have sexual intercourse with them. Hay said that if Welty had gone to trial two misdemeanor counts of communicating with a minor would have been added to reflect the two other victims, but those charges would have added little to his sentence.
Welty originally was charged with one count of second-degree child rape and one count of third-degree child rape, both involving the same victim. Changing the second-degree count to third-degree cut about seven years off Welty’s potential sentence, Hay said.
Authorities declined to comment on court documents that suggest Welty is a suspect in another “very similar” case involving a 16-year-old girl who had sex in a house in northwest Spokane with a man who resembled Welty and drove a similar vehicle.
The girl Welty admitted raping knew him as “Chad” when she met him in an Internet chat room in August 2002. They met in person about two weeks after their online contact. She told him she was 13, and he told her he was 24.
He picked her up, along with her younger sister, in the rural community of Elk in northern Spokane County and they drove to a nearby park. Welty gave the younger sister some money to persuade her to “go play,” court documents say. Then he had intercourse in the woods with the 13-year-old.
They continued having sex on various occasions after that, usually in his sport utility vehicle and often while he was wearing striped uniform pants. The girl told investigators she saw an identification card in his vehicle, and “Chad” told her he worked at “some corrections place out west near Airway Heights.”
The girl said she arranged in February 2004, when she was 15, to meet Welty at the Miller’s One Stop convenience store on U.S. Highway 2, near Elk. They were joined by two other girls, including the victim’s 11-year-old sister and a 12-year-old friend of theirs.
Welty took them to a house in northwest Spokane, possibly in the 5000 block of North Adams, and gave them wine coolers and other alcoholic drinks.
The 15-year-old said she and Welty had sex in front of the other girls, and he invited them to participate. The 12-year-old friend said Welty kissed her on the lips, gave her a “full body massage” and groped her sexually.
The mother of the two sisters said she told police in August 2002 that her older daughter was having an improper relationship with someone named Chad, and she made a second report in February 2004 after discovering the relationship had persisted. She heard numerous phone messages left by “Chad,” and gave detectives a pager number that was traced to Welty.
The victim identified Welty from a photo montage, and he was arrested Jan. 2 this year. Welty was released on bond, but was taken back into custody Wednesday. State law requires a presentence report to be prepared before sex offenders are sentenced.