Molester Blames His ‘Addiction’ on Lack of Therapy : Crime: But the prosecuting attorney says Richard E. Howard, who admits he is guilty of many offenses, is a predatory manipulator of ‘the worst kind.’ He could get 150 years.

A drifter who faked his own suicide in his native state of Washington and then ended up in San Diego County, where he admits molesting 15 girls, pleaded guilty this week to 91 counts of child molestation in what officials say is a landmark case.

Deputy Dist. Atty. John D. Williams calls it the worst case of child molestation ever recorded in San Diego County, where Richard E. Howard--also known as Bob Barret Holder--of Walla Walla, Wash., first showed up in 1989.

Howard, 46, could be given as many as 150 years in state prison when he is sentenced Feb. 26. The state had been seeking a sentence of 633 years for the 350 counts Howard accumulated after moving to Chula Vista two years ago.

The 5-foot-10, 320-pound Howard, who cried throughout a court hearing Thursday, told The Times he feels wronged by the criminal justice system and “never intended to hurt anyone,” although he admits having committed each and every crime of which he’s accused.

“You don’t just lock someone away who is sick,” he said in a telephone interview from County Jail. “It’s OK to lock them away, but then you treat them for the sickness.”

Howard said he was molested at least twice, the first time as an 8-year-old. None of the attacks was committed by his parents. He said that an “insensitive” response on the part of police contributed to his own eventual “addiction.”

Howard admits to having molested hundreds of young girls in the decades that followed.

“If I’d been given therapy the way they do nowadays, I’d have had better chances for my life,” he said sadly. “The police just told my mom, ‘Go on home, and, if we find him (the perpetrator), we’ll let you know.’ That was my therapy.”

Prosecutor Williams said Friday that he isn’t convinced Howard is telling the truth about why he became a child molester.

“In many cases, we find that the perpetrators of child molestation have been victimized themselves,” Williams said. “But we also find in many cases that perpetrators say they’ve been victimized. Whether it’s true or not in his case, I can’t say.

“I do know that manipulative personalities will continue to manipulate. Is he a manipulative personality? Absolutely.”

Williams says it was manipulation of the worst kind that allowed Howard to coerce children--in this case, 15 girls ranging in age from 3 to 12--to do the “despicable” things he asked them to do.

“He went to swap meets, boys’ and girls’ clubs, the YMCA pool, parks . . . anywhere he could find little girls,” Williams said. “His main target range was girls between 6 and 11. None were older than 12. One was as young as 3.

“He did every act that you could imagine a man and a woman performing, and he did them with little girls. The thing that’s unique about these types of crimes is that the victims are so vulnerable.

“Children of these ages are not sexually aware. They’re so malleable, so someone like this can take them and convince them this is normal behavior. But the reason this is such a violent crime is because of the effect it has on the victim.

“It’s something that remains with the victim for life. The memory is never going to go away. And the healing depends entirely on the type of help the child receives in overcoming the severe damage done.

“Howard is a man who violated these children savagely--not just their bodies and minds but their very beings.”

Williams said that, 5 1/2 years ago, on the eve of another trial for child molestation, Howard boarded a Washington state ferry and disappeared. Sometime during the one-hour trip across Puget Sound, officials said, Howard bade goodby to his dog and his car and vanished.

His mother called it a suicide. Williams called it an elaborate, manipulative trick, not unlike the dozens he played on unsuspecting children.

Williams said Howard left behind two young victims in his native state, then made his way across the country, to Louisiana, Texas and New Mexico.

He arrived in Chula Vista in 1989, Williams said, under a new identity--that of Bob Barret Holder, a child who died in New Orleans in 1952 at the age of 2 1/2 years and who was born four years before Howard.

“We have no information to indicate he ever knew the Holder child,” Williams said. “But he apparently did what other people in such circumstances do. He looked through the death rolls and found a person who had passed away but who had been born within a narrow range of his own age.

“He took on Holder’s identity. He obtained a birth certificate for Holder and went to various states building upon this false identity. He established a paper trail. He obtained a Social Security card and a GED (high-school equivalency degree) under that name. He got a driver’s license in New Mexico under that name.”

Howard was finally apprehended last April after a 10-year-old girl told her mother that he approached her and offered to store her candy in his car while she was attending a birthday party at a Chula Vista park.

Howard took hold of the girl’s hand and led her to his vehicle, the mother testified, where he showed the girl a pornographic magazine and described a sexual dream he said he had had about her.

Minutes later, when told of the incident, the mother called the police. When they arrived, Howard was still in the park. He showed them a New Mexico driver’s license that identified him as Holder.

Detectives then got a break when they received a call from a Washington state woman who had seen a newspaper photo of the man they believed to be Holder. She recognized him as the missing Howard.

FBI fingerprint analysis confirmed that the man in custody was the fugitive, Richard E. Howard.

A further check of Howard turned up three videotapes that Williams said became the devastating focal point of the case against him.

“One was taken at a motel in San Diego County,” Williams said. “One was taken at a field (near Chula Vista), and another was taken in Las Cruces, N.M. He has quite a few charges pending against him in New Mexico and Washington as well.

“The sheer number of crimes he committed, as well as the videotapes depicting them, make this case unusual. In graphic detail, (the tapes) show him molesting little girls. This is predatory behavior of the worst kind. I don’t think any of us can really imagine any scenario under which a person would perform these acts, but they do.

“These people exist. . . . They basically stalk our children.”

Williams said the judge has the option of giving Howard the maximum sentence of 150 years or as few as three years.

“But I will ask for the maximum sentence in the strongest possible terms,” Williams said. “This is a man who needs to be segregated from society. He represents a severe danger to the children of our community, not just in our state but anywhere he would go.

“If anyone needs to be put away for life, it’s this man.”

Howard does not disagree but says he wishes his incarceration would include a lifetime of treatment and therapy, “so I could just understand.” He says he knows he can’t control himself, and that he represents a threat.

“I’ve always been very upset about what I did, no more so than now,” he said. “In my early 20s, I tried to kill myself. I know it’s something beyond my control, and I’ve tried to stop, but I can’t.

“If my case means anything, though, I hope it shows that people like me need help--we need treatment. Therapy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. I never wanted to be the person I became.”

Howard served 14 months in a Washington state prison for fondling a girl in 1969--his first incarceration--and after that received therapy for the first and only time. He lost weight, he said, dropping to a trim 158 pounds, and staying free of what he calls his “crippling sexual addiction.”

“I did not molest anyone” from the early 1970s until the mid-1980s, he said, when a failed marriage “started my problems all over again.”

Howard says he has had “plenty of time to think, in jail,” about his own life and those whose lives have been forever marred by his.

“Inside of me is the boy who was molested,” he said. “I asked for help, and no help was given. I then became . . . the victim who created victims. I wish it had worked out different.”