Source: Women are Human
US — Gatlinburg, Tennessee. As many as 30 men have fallen victim to a pair of middle-aged tag-team rapists. The duo confessed to using the area around a homeless shelter as a hunting ground for slightly-built, heterosexual men battling homelessness and addiction to drugs and alcohol.
Dusty William Oliver, aged 41, and Richard Graham, aged 49, said their reason for targeting men who are heterosexual and suffering from addictions is that these characteristics made it unlikely that a victim would report the rape.
The lovers would befriend a target along the roadside in Knoxville. They would promise him drugs, alcohol and a trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, an attraction that is popular with tourists and frequented by families.
During a hike at the park along “unfamiliar trails in pitch darkness,” the predators would “sandwich” the man between their bodies. Both would rape the man at once, court records show.
The rapists would then drive the man they had victimized back to Knoxville and ditch him on the highway.
Surveillance video and a survivor’s description of the attackers enabled police to make the arrests in 2018.
Mr Graham, whom the court heard has identified as “transgender and wore makeup,” and Mr Oliver have each pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated sexual abuse in relation to incidents that took place in 2012 and 2015. DNA evidence linked the men to the crimes.
The pair acknowledge having committed four additional rapes, but still insist that the dozens of other incidents were consensual “sexual encounters.”
During sentencing, the defendants argued as a mitigating factor that they each had suffered sexual abuse. According to Mr Oliver, as a child, he had been repeatedly sexually assaulted by a male family member. Mr Graham recounted before the court an incident during his high school years when he says the football team called him an anti-transgender slur and gang-raped him. Mr Oliver and Mr Graham each claim to have been raped by the other at the start of the relationship.
“You don’t get to justify [by using] your past victim situation growing up to do that to another human being,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Kolman said. “It doesn’t give you the right to go around doing this to other people.” She noted that one of the victims was too traumatized to appear at the sentencing hearing, and the other, a New Jersey man, lives in fear.
“Each of these victims were violated not once but twice,” she said. “This wasn’t about sex. It was about power and humiliation and, perhaps, gratification. They had a pattern. They went after vulnerable victims.”
The New Jersey man testified at the hearing, “I drink myself to sleep. I’m not proud of it, but I fight these demons all the damn time. … I don’t forget that day. I was just some dude walking down the street.” Addressing the attackers, he said, “I wanted to kill both of you. But I couldn’t … I’d be sitting where you are now. F*** you. F*** you and the horses you rode in on. I know you don’t care about me.”
Mr Oliver has been sentenced to 25 years in prison, and Mr Graham to 19 years. After serving out the full sentences, each man will be under supervised release for 15 years and listed on the sex offender registry.
