Counselor convicted of rape

A state-paid family counselor was convicted of extorting sex from a woman he was supposed to be helping in a domestic crisis.

A Stevens County Superior Court jury Wednesday night convicted Preston Lynn Carbary of three counts of second-degree rape by a health care provider. The Loon Lake resident faces a standard range of 12 to 16 years in prison when Judge Rebecca Baker sentences him, tentatively set for June 1.

That sentence will be the minimum Carbary serves. A state parole board could keep him locked up for the rest of his life if it determines he remains a dangerous sex offender.

Carbary, 60, also faces a hearing on permanent loss of his now-suspended counseling license and a multimillion-dollar lawsuit in which the state Department of Social and Health Services also is a defendant.

Carbary was under contract with the Family Preservation Services unit of DSHS’s Child Protection Services division when he went to a Colville-area woman’s home and raped her on three occasions in November 2004. Trial testimony indicated he told the victim to “go along with” his sexual advances if she didn’t want to lose custody of her children.

Another Stevens County woman testified that Carbary did the same thing to her when he was assigned to provide counseling. She is the mother of children who were raped and molested by Loon Lake resident David Bruce Campbell in what former Prosecutor Jerry Wetle described as possibly the worst child-abuse case in the county’s history.

Campbell raped an 11-year-old girl and forced her to have sex with her 10-year-old brother and with a dog. He pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree child rape and one count of first-degree child molestation, and was sentenced in February 2005 to 26 1/2 years in prison.

Although Carbary wasn’t charged with raping the mother of Campbell’s victims, the state Department of Health said in licensing revocation proceedings that Carbary extorted sex from another Stevens County woman at least four times in the summer of 2004. The department didn’t publicly identify the other woman but said her case was similar to the one in which Carbary was convicted this week.

Carbary’s jury began hearing testimony Tuesday and delivered its verdict about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday after deliberating more than four hours.

Baker allowed Deputy Prosecutor David Turplesmith to present the testimony from the mother of Campbell’s victims to show a pattern of abuse by Carbary. Defense attorney Tim Trageser objected that the allegations didn’t produce a criminal charge.

Trageser also argued unsuccessfully that Carbary didn’t have sex with the Colville-area woman and that he shouldn’t have been charged with rape by a health care provider because no sex occurred during a counseling session. Jurors rejected that argument as well as Trageser’s contention that Carbary had no professional relationship with the woman because his primary duty was to counsel her boyfriend and the man’s daughter.

The boyfriend, whom the rape victim later married, had been arrested on a charge of assaulting his daughter. Carbary’s victim wasn’t the girl’s mother but feared the loss of her own children.

Besides threatening the woman about her children, testimony indicated Carbary threatened to report her drug use to the sheriff’s office. Trageser said Colville physician Barry Bacon testified he recommended medical marijuana to improve the woman’s appetite and prescribed morphine, Oxycodone, Xanex, Valium and Zoloft for acute anxiety and pain from car-wreck injuries.

The woman testified that Carbary paid for some of her drugs, and she shared them with him.

Carbary didn’t testify, but Trageser tried to deflate the victim’s testimony on grounds that she was addled by a cocktail of drugs on the occasions when Carbary was in her home.

Court documents say Carbary brought deli chicken during one of three visits in which he raped her in November 2004. He asked Child Protective Services to reimburse him for the chicken as well as pay him for 11 3/4 hours of counseling services.

Because Carbary was charged with committing the rapes while working as a health care provider, Turplesmith didn’t have to prove any physical force was used.

Were it not for the professional relationship the jury determined Carbary had with his victim, Carbary might have been charged with three counts of third-degree rape, Trageser said. In that case, Carbary would have faced a standard sentence of just 3 1/3 to 4 1/2 years in prison.

Spokane County Superior Court documents show Carbary, who used to live in Deer Park, sued the Department of Social and Health Services in 2003 over its handling of child abuse allegations against him.

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. 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, one of the daughters, who was almost 18, accused Carbary of injuring her in a violent struggle over a set of car keys.

CPS officials determined Carbary and the girl’s mother were guilty of child abuse or neglect. Carbary and the mother 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.