Mill Creek man sentenced for sexual assault

Published 11:16 pm Tuesday, September 22, 2009

EVERETT — A Mill Creek man was sentenced to more than a year in prison for sexually assaulting a girl who he’d been forbidden from seeing in 2007.

Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Dave Kurtz on Tuesday sentenced Joshua Tanner Beals to 14 months in prison, the maximum sentence under the law.

Beals, 24, pleaded guilty in July to third-degree rape of a child.

Kurtz told Beals he was lucky the law prevented the judge from giving him a longer sentence.

“Yes, you are going to prison but it will only be for a short time,” Kurtz said.

Beals was the only one responsible for the crime, not the girl, the judge said.

“Your conduct was simply wrong,” he said.

Beals acknowledged on Tuesday what he did was wrong. He said he wants to start over again.

Beals first engaged in a sexual relationship with the girl in 2006. He was a renter living in a house that was owned by the Mill Creek Community Church and located on church property when he and the girl first had intercourse, all at his residence. The girl was 13.

Prosecutors charged Beals with second-degree rape of a child in the 2006 case. He later pleaded guilty to fourth-degree assault with sexual motivation, a misdemeanor. He was allowed to serve work- release and was placed on two years of probation.

He was ordered not to have any contact with the girl.

Police arrested Beals again in March after learning that he and the girl had resumed a sexual relationship.

The girl, now 16, had sent messages to Beals on his MySpace page. He eventually responded to the girl’s messages and they arranged a meeting.

Beals and the girl had sex on several occasions in his pickup truck in parking lots around Snohomish County, according to court documents.

Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463, hefley@heraldnet.com.