6-year terms for sex attack

A judge on Friday sentenced Greg Haidl and two co-defendants to six-year prison sentences for their parts in the sexual assault of a 16-year-old girl, wrapping up an emotional four-year trial that riveted Orange County.

Judge Francisco Briseño said Haidl, 20, and Kyle Nachreiner and Keith Spann, both 21, had shown little remorse for the 2002 sexual assault, which Briseño said had caused irreversible emotional damage to the victim, identified throughout the trial only as “Jane Doe.”

Prosecutors had asked for a 12-year sentence for Haidl, a 10-year term for Nachreiner and six years for Spann. Because the three have already served a year in county jail ? and Haidl five months longer ? following their March 2005 convictions, defense attorneys estimated Haidl would serve 21 months in state prison, while Spann and Nachreiner would spend about 2 1/2 more years behind bars.

“They have been very slow to realize what is ahead for them,” said Briseño. “I don’t think they even comprehend the magnitude of state imprisonment.”

The victim and her family sat in the front row of the packed courthouse, filled with dozens of reporters, family and friends of the three defendants.

“My entire existence had been thrown out by the men I had trusted,” she said of the defendants in an emotional statement she read to the court.

In the months leading up to the first trial of the three, Doe said she was constantly pursued by private investigators, who put her entire family under surveillance and exposed her identity at a new school she had tried to attend after the assault.

She offered few details of the July 4, 2002, incident. According to police, Doe drove to the Corona del Mar home owned by Haidl’s father, former assistant sheriff Don Haidl, and engaged in sexual activity with all three of boys, who were then 17. Police say she later became intoxicated after drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana and eventually went unconscious. Police say Haidl and the other three took that opportunity to sexually assault the girl on a pool table with several objects, including a pool cue, a Snapple bottle and a cigarette.

They videotaped the entire incident.

“They completely violated me in every way,” she said

“Many years behind bars will make them think about what they did.”

The victim’s father also gave a brief statement, describing the videotape capturing the incident as “20 minutes of sick, disgusting perverse sexual gratification and pleasure,” where the three young men “joyfully find themselves sexually abusing and sodomizing my daughter.”

Greg Haidl made a brief, apologetic statement, saying the incident was meant to be “a night between friends” overshadowed by “immaturity, curiosity, stupidity, alcohol and marijuana.”

“I will never be anything but sorrowful that the incident took place,” he said.

Nachreiner also briefly spoke, calling the incident “repugnant” and saying “not a day goes by that I don’t regret that night.”

Defense attorneys argued that the three should be sentenced to probation because of their age at the time of the crime and lack of a criminal record.

Defense attorney John Barnett said he believed the victim was more traumatized by the trial and subsequent media coverage than the crime itself and said he was convinced the boys were remorseful for their actions. As a result of their convictions, the three will have to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.

Sending them to prison, he argued, would not rehabilitate them.

“They are looking into the depths of hell, and they are very frightened,” he said.

Briseño disagreed, saying that though he doesn’t often sentence first-time offenders to state prison, he was disturbed by the nature of the crime.

“I find that the victim never consented to being degraded and was completely out while she was lying on the pool table,” he said. “Each defendant has been slow to express remorse, and that remorse has been expressed in a guarded fashion, and at times, outweighed by personal self pity.”

He ruled that each defendant was equally culpable for the assault and would receive equal sentences.

The three defendants showed little emotion during the hearing. Wearing orange jumpsuits and handcuffed together, they avoided eye contact with the judge, the victim and their family members.

Barnett said the three men’s families had hoped the judge was going to show leniency and were upset by the sentences.

“It’s hard to put a pretty face on six years in prison,” he said.