Judge Rules to Move Anderson Case Forward, Adds Sixth Molestation Charge

A Superior Court judge in Oakland ruled Thursday afternoon that the case against Raymond Anderson will move forward to the next stage. 

Judge Charles A. Smiley III said there was sufficient evidence presented in the case to continue prosecution, and that the statute of limitations for filing charges in the case had not run out.

Two supporters of Anderson who have been attending the hearings said earlier this week that they hoped the molestation charges against him would be dismissed. 

Instead, the Alameda County district attorney's office added a sixth count to the charges against the 60-year-old Albany man. 

Anderson faces charges , twin girls who lived with him in the 90s after they were left in his care by their mother. 

Both alleged victims, now 32 years old, testified this week about what they say Anderson did to them. 

One sister recounted two incidents during which Anderson allegedly told her and her sister, then 12, to stimulate his penis. She said there were two other occasions when Anderson molested her alone when she was 12 or 13. The alleged incidents took place between 1991 and 1993. 

She said in testimony earlier this week that her mother had worked for Anderson at his antique shop on Colusa Avenue. She said, when she first met him, Anderson seemed to be "a very nice man" who treated his family very well.

When the girls were 11 turning 12, she said, their mother went to live with a new boyfriend and left the girls with Anderson.

The twin, who is referred to in court as Jane Doe 1, said she began at a certain point to work at Anderson's antique shop. 

During that time, she said, Anderson started "touching my behind, touching my legs, and having me sit on his lap." She said she told her mother about what was happening, and recalled her mother saying that Anderson "was a nice man and that I was probably taking it the wrong way."

She said that one day, after the girls had moved in with him, Anderson took them shopping for new clothes at J.C. Penney. Afterward, she said, Anderson called her and her sister into his room wearing only a white robe.

"He opened his robe and he had nothing on underneath. Me and my sister just kinda looked at each other like: 'What's going on here?'" she said, adding that Anderson then told them to touch his penis. "He was coaching us on what to do. He told my sister to straddle him and coached us on how to touch him on his body.... He grabbed my hand and showed me what to do.... To move it up and down." 

Three to four months later, she said, when they arrived home after Anderson had been teaching the girls to drive in the Golden Gate Fields racetrack parking lot, she said Anderson again told the girls to touch his penis. This time, she said, he had them intertwine their fingers and touch him together. 

Afterward, she said, he told them not to tell anyone. She remembers him saying, "Who would they believe, me or you? You guys do drugs, drink. They're not going to believe you." 

Both girls indicated that they had a fairly extensive history of regular drug use involving marijuana, alcohol and, eventually, methamphetamine; Jane Doe 1 said Thursday that she had been clean for nearly five years. At the time of the alleged abuse, she said, she was getting high on a daily basis and drinking on the weekends.

On another day, she said, she was home alone with Anderson, and had been "listening to music and dancing around in the front living room." They had recently taken a trip together, with her sister, to the Santa Cruz boardwalk, she recalled.

She said Anderson came into the room and told her that "since he took me and my sister out and did so many nice things for us, we should return the favor." She said, again, he was wearing only his bathrobe, and that he had her touch his penis in his bedroom.

The fourth incident happened, she said, after she had gotten in trouble at school, for having a gun or drugs in her locker; she said she had been arrested in her sixth grade classroom by an Albany police officer. 

Later, Anderson "told me he could make it go away," she said. The two of them were alone in Anderson's Jackson Street home. "He pulled his pants down to his knees, and his underwear down the same way. I already knew what to do (from the earlier times). He didn't even need to tell me." 

She said Anderson ejaculated on her wrist and forearm, and that she used an S.O.S. sponge to try to scrub herself clean "until I bled."

Anderson's defense attorney, public defender Richard Ortega, argued Thursday that the statute of limitations did not allow for the prosecution to continue because he said the girls and authorities would have had to file charges within a year. 

Prosecutor Danielle Hilton, an Alameda County deputy district attorney, argued that the Penal Code section that determined the statute of limitations in this case did, in fact, allow for prosecution to move forward, even despite the report in the 90s. 

Judge Smiley said he heard "a great historical discrepancy for a lot of these facts" described in the testimony by the three witnesses—the twins and . 

But he also noted that "credibility plays a huge role" during a preliminary hearing, and that he deemed there to be probable cause to move the case forward to the next level. 

On June 28, Anderson is scheduled to be "held to answer" at the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse, 225 Fallon St., in Oakland. During this kind of hearing, a defendant is arraigned on a legal document called "the Information," and will then enter a plea and proceed to trial.

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