BY ALAN PITTMAN
’Officer Blow Job’
EPD didn’t respond to complaints about Magaña.
R
oger Magaña, accused of raping or
sexually abusing a dozen women
while a Eugene Police Department
officer, was known on the street as “Officer
Blow Job,” a woman victim alleged last week
in court. Other victims claim EPD did not re-
spond to their complaints about Magaña’s be-
havior.
One alleged victim, a 39-year-old recov-
ered heroin addict and mother, appeared to be
the most frequent target of Magaña. She cried
as she alleged how Magaña molested her and
forced her to give oral sex numerous times by
threatening to arrest her, kill her or have her
child taken away.
At one point, the woman pleaded with
Magaña to stop forcing sex from her after he
had touched her breasts and put his finger in
her vagina, she alleged. Magaña had taken
her in his patrol car to an area near Chambers
Street where school buses are parked.
“I was upset,” she said. “I just said I
couldn’t take it anymore.” Magaña re-
sponded angrily, she said, “he acted like he
was just doing me favors or something.”
The woman alleged Magaña put his po-
lice gun against her chest and told her, “If you
ever tell anyone, I’m going to fucking kill
you.”
At Magaña’s direction Lara touched her
vaginal area and breasts and pulled her pants
down on a busy street corner at rush hour, the
woman alleged. The woman said she asked
for a female officer to conduct the search, but
Magaña threatened to jail her. The officers
found no drugs and let her go, she said.
Officer Lara was convicted earlier this year
of sex abuse and sentenced to five years in
prison.
Later, the same woman alleged Magaña
picked her up in his patrol car in the
Whiteaker neighborhood and said he would
arrest her unless she performed oral sex.
Magaña told her that no one would believe
her if she complained, saying, “you’re a pros-
titute and a heroin addict and I’m a police of-
ficer,” the woman alleged.
Magaña pulled over near a vacant lot and
“took a handful of my hair and forced my
head into his lap,” the woman alleged. She
said, crying, that she fought back yelling,
pleading and elbowing and finally struggled
free and out the car door.
Magaña hopped the curb in his patrol car
after her and nearly hit her, the woman al-
leged. She said she managed to escape into
the night. “I was running for my life. I was
scratched up and bleeding from blackberry
Magaña came to her ‘infuriated’ that she had complained, demanded more oral sex,
ripped off her pants, ‘touched my genitals with his gun,’ and said,
‘If you tell anyone anything about me, I’ll blow you up from the inside out,’ she alleged.
Later, Magaña threatened to tell drug
dealers she was ratting on them to police, the
woman alleged. On the street such an action
“can be life threatening,” she said.
The first time Magaña picked her up off
the street in his patrol car, he drove her to a re-
mote area of the Eugene Airport and threat-
ened to jail her for possession unless she gave
him oral sex, she alleged. “I was crying and
panicked and shocked.”
The next time he picked her up, Magaña
repeated the threat and drove to a remote area
near the Whiteaker railroad tracks. She says
she feared the “absolutely horrendous and
physically painful” drug withdrawal she
would have in jail and felt she had no choice
but to perform oral sex.
Another time Magaña threatened arrest
again and took the woman to a “disgusting”
restroom in Monroe Park where junkies shot
up and forced her to get on her knees and
again perform oral sex, she alleged.
Afterwards, “he walked out of the bathroom
and I vomited.”
The demands for oral sex on threat of ar-
rest happened over and over again, the
woman alleged. “Every time it got worse and
worse. There was more aggression and more
threats,” she said. After she was excused for
the day, the woman left the courtroom and
sobbed in the hallway.
On cross examination the next day, de-
fense attorney Russell Barnett asked if she
was motivated by her civil lawsuit against the
city.
“I don’t think there’s any amount of
money that could ever make it up,” she said
of what happened to her.
Another woman, a 28-year-old former
heroin user and prostitute, alleged Magaña
directed his trainee officer Juan Lara to drug
search her “in a very demeaning way.”
8 JUNE 24, 2004
bushes, nails from fences.”
When Magaña later saw her on the street,
the woman alleges he threatened, “if you tell
anyone what happened, I will make your life
a living hell,” she said. “I was scared for my
life, so I moved to Springfield.”
On cross examination the woman denied
she was motivated by a $2.25 million lawsuit
she has filed against the city. But she said, “I
think Magaña needs to pay for what he did to
me and others.”
Another alleged victim, a 43-year-old
woman, said Magaña responded to a domes-
tic dispute at her house four years ago. The
woman alleged Magaña threatened her with
arrest and made her perform oral sex on her
knees in the hallway. “I was very in-
timidated,” she said. “I felt like I had no
choice.”
Another woman, 26, alleged Magaña fol-
lowed her home and tried to hit on her. She
said Magaña held her hand tight and asked
for a kiss on the cheek outside her home.
Feeling like she had to kiss him, the woman
said she tried to kiss his cheek, but “he turned
his face and slopped his mouth on mine,” she
alleged. She said Magaña left after she told
him her uncle worked for the county Sheriff’s
Department.
A 31-year-old woman alleged Magaña
also forced oral sex from her numerous times
by threatening to send her to jail or take her
daughter away. She said she grew fearful that
the officer would kill her and at one point she
spat his semen out on a pair of sweatpants to
keep as evidence. Prosecutor Bob Lane
alleged the semen DNA matches
Magaña.
The woman’s 10-year-old daughter testi-
fied that she saw “officer Roger” French kiss-
ing her mother while Magaña was in “his of-
ficer suit.”
EPD F AILED TO S TOP M AGAÑA
The trial, expected to last until mid July,
continues to raise questions about how
Magaña was allegedly able to sexually abuse
and rape so many women without the EPD
stopping him.
The 39-year-old woman testified that she
told Eugene Police Officer Jerry Webber
what Magaña was doing, but the department
did nothing. “I hollered for help to the police
department and he didn’t do a damn thing for
me,” the woman alleged angrily.
The lack of action by the EPD left her
feeling “hopeless and helpless,” the woman
said. “I didn’t understand how he [Magaña]
could do this and not get caught when he’s
supposed to be someone you could trust.”
The only apparent result of her complaint
was more abuse from Magaña, the woman al-
leged. Magaña came to her “infuriated” that
she had complained, demanded more oral
sex, ripped off her pants, “touched my geni-
tals with his gun,” and said, “If you tell any-
one anything about me, I’ll blow you up from
the inside out,” she alleged.
Magaña later threatened her until she
would restore his reputation by writing a
glowing commendation letter, she alleged.
“He was going to hurt me, kill me, hurt my
daughter, take my daughter away.”
Officer Webber testified that he asked
Officer Magaña about the woman’s allega-
tions, but Magaña denied it. Webber said
Magaña told him the woman had made the
same allegations about him.
Webber said he asked the woman if she
had accused him of abuse while the officer
drove her to jail. Webber said the woman de-
nied she had and also recanted her allegations
against Magaña.
Another woman screamed out to munici-
pal court Judge Wayne Allen that Magaña
had made her perform oral sex, Allen testi-
fied. But Allen and his clerk did not report or
pursue the incident.
A female police officer, Dallas Hall, testi-
fied that Magaña once called on her to arrest a
naked “bitch” in a bathtub at a hotel. She
thought the incident “very strange” and “un-
professional” but she did not report Magaña
to her superiors. The woman in the bathtub
was one of Magaña’s most frequent alleged
victims.
The EPD might have saved a dozen
women from sex abuse had it acted on a sex-
ual harassment complaint against Magaña al-
most a decade ago. An Hispanic woman testi-
fied that when she was 17 and a police cadet,
Magaña hit on her and pressed his chest
against her breasts and pushed his crotch
against her against her will. The woman said
she complained about Magaña to Officer
Jennifer Bills.
Officer Bills testified that she told Magaña
that his sexual advances on to the woman were
inappropriate because she was a minor and he
was married. Bills said Magaña continued to
flirt with the cadet, but she said she did not file
a written report on the problem nor did she tell
superiors. Bills is now in charge of investigat-
ing officer misconduct for the EPD.
The cadet alleged Magaña retaliated after
her complaint by having another cadet spray
foam on her. She said she dropped out of the
cadet program and gave up her dream of be-
coming a police officer. “To become a police
officer it seemed like I had to deal with a lot,
like officers like Roger Magaña.”
The 28-year-old victim who struggled
away rather than give Magaña oral sex said she
asked the officer how a cop could expect to get
away with forcing sex. She said Magaña
replied, “Oh, you would be amazed at what I
ew
can do, and I can get away with.”