Ex-health care worker pleads innocent to rape

A former counselor for Washington Child Protective Services pleaded innocent Tuesday to charges that he raped a woman he was assigned to help.

Preston Lynn Carbary, 58, of Loon Lake, is charged in Stevens County Superior Court with three counts of second-degree rape by a health care provider.

Carbary is accused of extorting sex from the woman by threatening her with loss of custody of her children. Prosecutor Jerry Wetle won’t have to prove physical force was used, as ordinarily would be required for second-degree assault, if he can prove that the sex occurred during a health care treatment session.

If convicted as charged, Carbary would face a standard-range sentence of 12 to 16 years in prison.

Defense attorney Tim Trageser declined to comment except to say, “There has been no sexual contact between my client and the alleged victim in this case.”

Carbary, who is not considered a flight risk, was summoned into court instead of being arrested. Judge Al Nielson allowed him to remain free without bail until his trial, scheduled for Dec. 5.

According to charging documents Wetle filed in court, Child Protective Services assigned Carbary last October to counsel a Colville-area family. The agency had ordered the husband not to be in the family home until the counseling was completed.

At the time, Carbary was working under contract with CPS’s Family Preservation Services unit. Connie Lambert-Eckel said Carbary’s contract was terminated in March this year.

“I think you know why,” she said, declining to comment further.

Court documents indicate Stevens County sheriff’s investigators were notified in June, by a doctor to whom the alleged victim disclosed her allegations against Carbary.

The rapes occurred in the woman’s home on three occasions in November, Wetle wrote in charging documents. The documents also say Carbary persuaded the woman to share drugs with him, including Oxycodone, Valium and marijuana. The woman reportedly said she turned over the drugs for fear Carbary would take her children.

Similarly, she said she cooperated when Carbary put his arms around her shortly before Thanksgiving and told her, “Just go along with it. Do what you are told and everything will be all right.” The woman told authorities Carbary usually smelled of alcohol on the three occasions when he extorted sex from her, according to court documents.

Carbary told detectives he usually visited the woman’s home in the evening and always talked to her in a basement kitchen and dining area, near the woman’s bed, Wetle stated in an affidavit. Wetle said CPS records showed Carbary billed the agency for 11 3/4 hours of services to the woman and her family last October through December.

According to the prosecutor, Carbary billed CPS for prepared chicken he took to the woman’s house on the night of the second alleged rape.

Spokane County Superior Court documents show Carbary, who used to live in Deer Park, sued the state Department of Social and Health Services – CPS’s parent agency – in 2003.

The lawsuit involved a dispute that sprang from Carbary’s relationship with a woman whose son he was assigned to represent in court as a guardian ad litem in the fall of 2001. Guardians ad litem are supposed to look out for the interests of children even if their interests differ from those of their parents.

The woman and her three children, including the son and two daughters, moved in with Carbary in January 2002.

A month later, court documents indicate, the woman asked Carbary to take a set of car keys from one of her daughters by force, if necessary. The girl, who was almost 18, resisted and a violent struggle ensued.

She reportedly bit and struck Carbary and he caused her a “substantial” back injury, including a foot-long scrape that left a scar, when she crashed into a bed post while he was attempting to force her to the floor and restrain her.

CPS officials determined Carbary and the girl’s mother were guilty of child abuse or neglect, and they appealed administratively and then to Spokane County Superior Court Judge Maryann Moreno.

Moreno upheld most of the administrative findings, but ordered DSHS officials to reconsider the case on grounds that Carbary’s self-defense claims were ruled out improperly.