Rape law crusaders accused
Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, July 25, 2001
Associated Press
AKRON, Ohio — A couple who once campaigned to make Ohio’s rape laws tougher has been accused of violating those laws by forcibly impregnating the woman’s teen-age daughter.
John and Narda Goff, the girl’s stepfather and mother, were free on a $500 bond after pleading innocent Tuesday in Summit County Common Pleas Court to accusations they used a syringe to impregnate the girl with her stepfather’s semen.
Prosecutors say paternity tests confirmed that John Goff is the father of the 18-year-old girl’s 22-month-old son.
The girl, who was not identified, said when she was 16 her mother asked her to bear her husband’s child because Narda Goff has multiple sclerosis and could no longer give birth.
The girl claims her parents monitored her menstrual cycle to gauge her most fertile time and then used syringes to impregnate her against her will.
On Sept. 1, 1999, she gave birth to a boy.
John Goff, 39, is charged with two counts of rape and sexual battery and a single count of child endangerment. Narda Goff, 42, is accused of complicity to the same charges.
The couple’s attorney, Walter Madison, called the case "a family tragedy."
"The family has suffered a lot through all of this and they are awaiting their day in court," he said Tuesday, declining further comment.
After a man accused of molesting the girl 10 years ago was acquitted in 1993, the couple began a public campaign to toughen state rape laws.
Around that time, the girl said her stepfather began molesting her and threatened to kill her if she spoke of the abuse.
"He was going all around the state saying, ‘Don’t do this to children’ when at the same time he was doing it to me," she told the Akron Beacon Journal in Wednesday’s editions.
Jurors could not convict the man because under Ohio law at the time, only sexual intercourse was considered rape. Her parents’ campaign persuaded lawmakers to change the law in 1996 to include penetration with any object as a component to rape.
Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
