Johnson confronted by daughter victim, who describes sexual abuse
By Jim Caufield
ADEL — Randy August Johnson, the former Dallas Center minister arrested in January 2017 on sexual abuse charges, was confronted by his victim here Friday morning in a sentencing hearing before Dallas County District Court Judge Terry Rickers.
Speaking in open court, Rachel Johnson, 17, the adoptive daughter of Randy Johnson and Kathy Johnson, accused her father of sexually abusing her and accused her mother of ignoring the abuse.
“I want everyone in this courtroom to know that Randy August Johnson is not innocent,” Rachel Johnson said, “and he deserves the maximum sentence for all the sexual, mental and emotional abuse I will forever live with. Randy, Kathy and I all know he is guilty of all 13 charges.”
Randy Johnson was originally charged with five counts of third-degree sexual abuse, three counts of indecent contact with a child, two counts of indecent exposure, two counts of assault with intent to commit sexual abuse and one count of child endangerment.
A plea bargain was reached Jan. 12 when Randy Johnson’s attorney, Aaron D. Hamrock of West Des Moines, entered an Alford plea of guilty to one count of child endangerment causing bodily injury and one count of indecent exposure.
An Alford plea is a guilty plea in which the defendant does not admit to the criminal act and asserts innocence. A conviction for child endangerment resulting in bodily injury, a class D felony, carries a prison term up to five years. A conviction for indecent exposure, a serious misdemeanor, carries up to a two-year jail term.
“It is very difficult to describe how this event has changed my life,” Rachel Johnson said. “I spend a lot of time crying, thinking I’m not good enough or why God would something so tragic happen to me.”
Rachel Johnson was joined in the gallery of the district courtroom by about a dozen friends and supporters, including the Rev. Michelle Leonard of Dallas Center, Johnson’s spiritual counselor.
Randy Johnson also attended the sentencing hearing in the company of supporters, including his wife, Kathy Johnson, her uncle, Bill Fry of Gladbrook, Iowa, and several others.
Kathy Johnson admonished the members of the media prior to the start of the proceedings, warning the reporters their stories would have “eternal ramifications. I only care that the truth is told, and I have not experienced that so far.”
Fry posed a hypothetical question: “If the defendant wasn’t a pastor, would the media even be here? How many sex offenders are put on trial here every month? It shows right off where the bias is with the liberal media.”
Rachel Johnson said she was adopted into the Johnson home at the age of 4. She said her father first molested her when she was 12, and she described his chronic abuse and her mother’s indifference.
“The sexual abuse kept happening,” she said, even in the truck her father used to haul grain for a friend. “One night my mom, dad and I all sat on the bed and had a conversation. My mom asked if he was really sexually abusing me, and I said, ‘Yes.’ My dad didn’t say anything. She didn’t know who to believe. My mom said she was going to take both of us to a lie detector in the morning, and I was all for it. My dad didn’t want to go because he knew he’d get caught. My dad finally told her the truth of what he’d been doing to me. My mom still didn’t care.”
While Rachel Johnson called for the maximum sentence of seven years’ prison time for her father, Randy Johnson’s attorney asked the judge for a deferral of judgment, which would leave the defendant with no criminal record.
Splitting the difference, Assistant Dallas County Attorney Erica W. Clark, following the recommendations of the pre-sentence investigation, urged the court to suspend the sentences, avoiding prison time but entailing probation and sex offender treatment and registry.
Before delivering the sentence, Judge Rickers noted that “Rachel’s victim impact statement referred to other offenses that she states occurred in the past. I am only allowed to consider offenses that are actually proven and adjudicated in court, so I’m limited to the consideration of the child endangerment and the indecent exposure.”
Rickers said “because of the nature of the offenses and certainly in no small part due to the effect that it’s had on Mr. Johnson’s daughter, I believe that it is most appropriate to impose a suspended sentence in this case.” He said “the restrictions and sanctions associated with a suspended sentence are more appropriate in this case than a deferral of judgment would be.”
Johnson was sentenced to three years’ probation on the charge of child endangerment causing bodily injury and two years of probation for indecent exposure. The sentences will be served concurrently.
“I realize that you were hoping for the opportunity to keep this off your record in the future,” Rickers told Johnson. “There’s just been too much damage done, and that’s again apparent in the statement from your daughter today. I feel that I am obligated as a part of my duty to protect the public to make sure that this conviction remains a matter of record and that you obtain the treatment and counseling that is obviously needed in this case.”
Rachel Johnson also directed her father to another and a higher judge.
“Randy,” she said, “if you read the Bible you have, you know forgiveness does not come from doing good things. It comes from repentance, which requires facing and acknowledging the truth about what you have done. I pray you experience the guilt of what you have done to me and so you may someday experience true repentance and true forgiveness from God, which you need far more than forgiveness from me.”
Following the hearing, Randy Johnson declined to answer questions. Hamrock, his attorney, said, “Obviously, we were disappointed in not receiving a deferred judgment in this matter, but I understand the statements and the reasons of the court.”
Dallas County Attorney Wayne Reisetter, who was in court for the hearing, said afterward he was satisfied that justice was served in the case. Speaking generally, he said the terms of a plea bargain depend on “the evaluation of evidence in the process of meeting our ethical standards of how we evaluate a case in preparation for trial and in anticipation of the evidence that would be presented.”
Reisetter said his office weighs “the totality of the evidence against what we expect a jury would do with the evidence. So it’s not a criticism of the evidence or of a witness or witnesses. It’s just what is the totality against jury outcomes.” The calculation, he said, is based on “what experience we have had with juries in Dallas County on evidence of similar types of cases. How do we evaluate that outcome with the evidence that we presented in those cases against evidence we view here? It’s lots of moving parts, and it’s applying our judgment out of our experience together with the ethical provisions taught to us about what we should consider and how we should move forward with a case.”
Rachel Johnson also answered questions for the media after the hearing, saying it “felt really good” to confront her abuser.
“He got what he deserved,” she said. “He didn’t get prison time like I was hoping, but he did get probation, and it will be on his record, and it’s never going to go off.” She said the ordeal has “really impacted me. It’s torn my whole life apart, but I’ve learned from it. I’ve made a lot of good family, a lot of good friends, and I think I’ve become a lot better of a person.”