Man Gets 65 Years for Rape, Torture

The day after their son was sentenced to 65 years to life in prison for raping and torturing a teenage girl he met on the Internet, Brian Dance’s parents continued to push for a new trial.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Frank F. Fasel denied Dance’s motion for a new trial Tuesday before sentencing the former UC Irvine student to prison.

Defense attorney Stuart Faber said Wednesday that the lengthy sentence bolstered Dance’s parents’ desire to have their son retried, this time in front of a jury and to include Dance’s testimony that some parts of the December 2001 incident were consensual. His recent trial was in front of a judge.

“His parents take the position that the girl willingly participated in some of those things,” Faber said. “A jury might have believed him or might not, but he never had that chance.”

Dance, 22, of Newport Beach was convicted of seven felonies after testimony that he had tied up and raped the 15-year-old girl, struck her with his belt buckle with such force that it chipped a tooth and tried to carve swastikas in her cheek and forehead as “symbols of hate.”

“I was like a madman,” Dance said in a taped interview with police investigators. “I was trying to teach her a lesson.”

A tape of the 80-minute police interrogation of Dance was played for the judge.

During one portion, Dance tells investigators that the girl threatened to accuse him of statutory rape when he told her that she was “too ugly” to date.

That interview should never have been admitted as evidence, said Faber. He also said a letter from a psychologist who examined the victim shortly after the attack said she had admitted portions of the evening were consensual.

But Dance’s former attorney, 20-year veteran Marlin Stapleton Jr., said his client never told him the incident was, in part, consensual.

Stapleton was called as a witness during the motion for a new trial.

The victim, now 17 and a high school student, said during Tuesday’s sentencing that she still carries emotional scars from the 2 1/2-hour attack and told Dance he deserves to die in prison.

Dance was arrested when a friend of the victim struck up an Internet conversation with Dance and arranged to meet him at the Block in Orange, the same place where the 15-year-old had met the suspect.

When Dance arrived, police were waiting.

Neither the victim nor case prosecutor Deputy Dist. Atty. Steve McGreevy were available for comment Wednesday.