Kent Kafatia, the City College security officer originally accused of attacking four different women, returns to court 8:30 a.m. tomorrow for “readiness and settlement.”
“This means the judge wants to know if we can set a trial date. He wants to know if the lawyers are ready,” said Senior Deputy District Attorney Joyce Dudley.
Kafatia’s attorney, Public Defender Karen Atkins, said, “I believe my client is innocent of what he’s accused of for various reasons.
We’re anxious to get the trial started as quickly as possible but we also want to be thoroughly prepared. I’m still waiting to get a lot of reports from the police and the District Attorney.”
Kafatia remains in County Jail with his bail set at $1 million.
“I’m very unhappy my client is still in custody but he recognizes that we need to be properly prepared,” Atkins said.
She also said that she is currently searching the community for character witnesses to “shed some light on the situation.”
“I don’t think the things my client is accused of fit his character,” she said.
Atkins said she wants to begin issuing subpoenas but cannot do so without a trial date. She added there is some question about misidentification. For example, one victim originally identified her attacker as Hispanic. Kafatia is black.
“He was mistakenly identified as the perpetrator of that offense,” said Atkins. “It’s one of the many reasons I’m confident that he is not the person who did that. He’s a male and that’s about where it begins and ends.”
Kafatia was arrested Nov.14 while on duty as a security officer at City College. He was originally a suspect in two sexual assaults that occurred earlier that morning.
One involved a 20-year-old woman who said a man picked her up in a City College security vehicle and raped her.
The second woman, 51, said she passed out from intoxication and awoke to find a used condom on the floor.
She told police that she believed Kafatia had raped her because he had phoned earlier in the evening to ask to have sex with her.
Police located the campus truck matching the description the first woman gave on campus and arrested Kafatia who was still on duty at the time.
Later, two more women identified Kafatia as their attacker in incidents on Dec. 6, 2003 and Oct. 31, 2004, after seeing him on the news.
On the third day of the pretrial hearing Dec. 9, Judge George Eskin dismissed two counts stemming from the alleged rape reported by the 51-year-old woman.
Dudley said she understands Eskin’s position.
“Rape of an intoxicated person is hard to prove in court,” she said.
Kafatia will stand trial for three of the four alleged incidents, all of which occurred at City College while he was on duty.
He faces eight of the original 10 charges, including rape, attempted rape, sexual battery, criminal threats and false imprisonment. Kafatia plead not guilty to all charges.
Kafatia had come to City College from Malawi, Africa.
He transferred to UCSB and was spending most nights at the Salvation Army until he was adopted by a group calling themselves the Friends of Kent, who raised $17,000, as of October, for his education and even took him into their homes.
Dudley said that after tomorrow’s “readiness and settlement” hearing she will know better when a court date may be set.