Man gets 10 years for assaulting fiancee

Just weeks before he was scheduled to graduate from Eastern Washington University, a Cheney man became angry during a telephone conversation with his girlfriend’s stepbrother.

Rick E. Swaney, 31, then turned that undisclosed family argument into a night of horror.

Swaney choked his fiancee to near unconsciousness, put a gun to her head, sexually assaulted her and then began stashing weapons to kill her family, according to court records and testimony. The woman said she escaped on May 23 after she took one of Swaney’s knives and cut her way out through a window screen before running to the Cheney Police Department.

“Thinking about what happened that night makes me nauseous,” the girlfriend said in a prepared statement read Wednesday by victim advocate Heather Turner. “I remember the look on your face as you choked me, that sick grin. I thought I was going to die, and you were having the time of your life.”

Deputy Spokane County Prosecutor John Love agreed to drop rape and kidnapping charges against Swaney, who was honorably discharged from the U.S. Marines and had no previous felony criminal record. In exchange, Swaney pleaded guilty to first-degree domestic violence assault.

The plea agreement “was mostly based on the desires of the victim,” Love said. “In the relationship, they had disputes over time but it was never physical. It’s almost as if he snapped.”

Superior Court Judge Ellen Kalama Clark sentenced Swaney on Wednesday to 10 years in prison.

“Let me be really honest with you,” Clark told Swaney. “When I read the affidavit of probable cause it made me nauseous, too. This is a serious, offensive, terrible criminal action. It will affect her for the rest of her life. And you will be affected too, sir.”

Clark asked Swaney what happened that night.

“I had been up a long time working on a paper. And somebody called, and I got angry,” Swaney said. “I just went off the deep end. There is no excuse for it. I’m very sorry, your honor. I deserve every day that I serve.”

According to court records, the girlfriend, who had been dating Swaney for eight years, came home from classes about 10 p.m. She watched TV with Swaney until about 11 p.m. when they went to bed.

Shortly after 11 p.m., the girlfriend awoke to find Swaney screaming into the telephone and pacing the house. She told investigators that she tried to calm him down, but he began to assault her, according to court records.

“Eventually you stopped strangling me, but that was just the beginning of a long night full of cold, gut-wrenching terror,” the girlfriend wrote in her statement. “My fear meant nothing to you when you put that gun in my face.

“You laughed and told me it would be all right, you were just going to put a bullet in my head and I wouldn’t feel a thing. I begged for my life instead. That is when the cryptic game began.”

The girlfriend said Swaney threatened to kill her and her father.

“You started making plans, gathering weapons, guns, knives and even a golf club for when you run out of bullets,” she wrote. “The situation was rapidly deteriorating with no prospects of escape in sight. And then you raped me.”

Not long after the sexual assault, Swaney’s father came to the house, according to court records.

“He gave me the chance I needed to bail out of the bedroom window and run to the police station several blocks away,” the girlfriend wrote.

The girlfriend said she doesn’t hate Swaney and even feels pity for him.

“I know you are struggling to reconcile who you are and what you did to me. It is difficult to let go of your dream,” she wrote. “We were going to get married, buy a house, have 2.5 kids and a dog.

“I have wasted eight years of my life with someone … who wanted to kill me and my family.”

Assistant Public Defender Jeff Compton struggled to explain his client’s actions.

“This particular situation was troubling on a couple different levels,” Compton said. “Obviously you feel for the victim in this case. But it’s also troubling because I can’t see how Mr. Swaney got to this position.”

Most offenders have a pattern of escalation before they commit serious crimes or assaults, he said.

“In fact, there wasn’t a history of Mr. Swaney laying a hand on this particular person prior to this,” Compton said. “Mr. Swaney had everything set up for success. This is just one of those things that you simply can’t explain. It was just bad for everybody involved.”