Ex-Bus Driver Gets Life For Rape
By Ramon Coronado, Bee Staff Writer
Originally published in The Sacramento Bee, May 14, 2002
A 48-year-old former bus driver for people with disabilities was sentenced Monday in Sacramento Superior Court to a 37-year-to-life term in prison for raping one of his passengers.
"He is a predator who sought out the most vulnerable in our community," Deputy District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert said of the defendant.
Willie Bolton, who was convicted by a jury in March of raping the developmentally disabled woman, will be 108 before he is eligible for parole.
During trial, the victim, who is 34 but has the mental capacity of a 7-year-old, testified she didn't know how many months there are in a year or how to tell time.
But she was able to remember details of her attack seven years ago, which took place while the bus was parked along a road under a row of eucalyptus trees.
In the hallway after the sentencing, the victim hugged Schubert and thanked her for the years of work she put into the case.
"We did it," the victim told Schubert.
Bolton was convicted of the May 1995 rape of the woman, who was then 28. While awaiting trial on the rape charge, Bolton was rearrested and charged with molesting his 11-year-old stepdaughter. He was convicted on that charge, too.
The only person to speak to the judge was the 34-year-old's mother.
"My daughter and I have gone through a lot. I hope he never gets out to hurt another woman again," the mother said, her eyes filled with tears.
As Judge Lloyd G. Connelly pronounced the sentence, the rape victim turned and smiled at one of her teachers who sat with a handful of school employees, many of them also in tears.
David Rymel, one of the jurors who convicted Bolton, was sitting next to them.
"After we convicted him, I just had to see what happened to him. I have grandchildren myself," Rymel said.
On the other side of the audience was Bolton's mother, who has made every one of her son's court appearances. Bolton's wife, who says she believes her husband was wrongly convicted, was also there.
According to a probation report prepared for the sentencing, the rape victim was scared after she was attacked on the back seat of the bus.
"Keep your mouth closed," the victim said Bolton told her after the rape and before he stopped to pick up other students.
The victim told investigators she kept the attack to herself for two years until one night when she was washing dishes with her mother. The victim began to argue with her mother for no apparent reason.
"Willie raped me, and I wasn't going to tell you," the victim is quoted as saying in the report.
The victim said she was afraid her mother would be angry because a year earlier she was sexually assaulted by another driver from the same bus company.
The victim and two other disabled women sued the company, MV Transportation, saying they were raped and sexually assaulted by bus drivers, two of whom had criminal records. The bus company settled the suits for $500,000, court testimony showed.
After the assaults, a loophole in state law was closed with legislation that required background checks on bus drivers of disabled adults. Before the attacks, only bus drivers of schoolchildren could be screened.
