Newport Beach Man Pleads Guilty to Rape

By PAUL ANDERSON

A Newport Beach man acquitted in July of multiple rape charges related to five women pleaded guilty today to one count of rape by intoxication and was expected to be sentenced to time served behind bars, his attorney said.

Jurors in July had deadlocked on the claims of two other women, forcing a mistrial on those counts for 46-year-old Adel Regragui.

Regragui was scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 13 to six years in prison, but he has credit for 7 1/2 years behind bars, his attorney Jack Earley said.

Regragui had gone on trial on charges of sexually assaulting six women and trying to attack a seventh woman who prosecutors argued got away.

Jurors split 7-5 for innocence on most of the remaining counts, according to Earley.

“The counts that deadlocked I thought were their weakest counts,” Earley told City News Service in July.

“Those were the people who waited the longest to report (to police) ... Those are by themselves the most defensible for us. We had information and evidence on those we didn’t bring forward because we didn’t think we needed to because the allegations were so bizarre.”

Messages left with Deputy District Attorney Michael Carroll were not immediately returned.

The cases dated back to 2005, with the most recent encounter taking place in November 2011.

In Carroll’s opening statement, he said the earliest accuser met the defendant as he was riding his bicycle in Newport Beach in March 2005.

The woman said Regragui asked her if she wanted to use cocaine, but she said she was in a rehabilitation program in Newport Beach and could not consume any drugs, Carroll said.

After she drank from a bottle of water the defendant allegedly gave her she felt as if she was fading in and out of consciousness, Carroll said.

“She remembers pushing her legs up against his chest to try to get him off of her,” Carroll said. “She remembers running to the bathroom, puking because she felt so sick.”

While in the defendant’s bathroom, she saw he had cocaine so she snorted a line and ran away, Carroll said.

A drug test showed she had Xanax in her system, a drug she said she has never taken on her own, Carroll said. Because that threatened her status in rehab, the woman moved back to Illinois to reunite with her family, Carroll said.

Another woman sought Regragui out to obtain drugs because he was known as “the guy to go to get drugs,” Carroll alleged.

Regragui was accused of putting GHB in Gatorade and giving it to that woman, Carroll alleged. He persuaded her to smoke cocaine, but then told her she was not doing it correctly and took a puff of the drug and blew the smoke into her mouth, Carroll alleged.

The prosecutor said Regragui had the woman participate in “role play” games and had her put on lingerie and fix her hair up in pigtails before he forced her to perform various sex acts, a common theme in the alleged attacks, Carroll said.

The woman had cocaine and methamphetamine in her system when she was tested by authorities, Carroll said.

Other alleged victims told investigators Regragui persuaded them to smoke cocaine and then said they weren’t doing it right, prompting him to blow smoke into their mouths before they lost control and he sexually assaulted them, Carroll alleged.

In his opening statement, Earley said his client emigrated to the United States from Morocco and was working in the banking industry before he discovered the Newport Beach night life and decided to get a job at a popular night spot there.

Earley characterized the Newport Beach peninsula as a “vortex of energy” where women sometimes do shots before going out to “get crazy.”

The alleged victims in the case all had some motive for being dishonest about their encounters with Regragui, including one wanting to conceal an affair from a boyfriend, Earley told the court.

The alleged victim in 2005 was trying to avoid getting put into a lock- down rehab facility because she failed a drug test, Earley said.

According to Earley, Regragui asked some of the women if they wanted to indulge in role playing with one woman saying she wanted to act out a rape fantasy.

City News Service