Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, May 19, 1995                   TAG: 9505190093
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FAKE OFFICER PLEADS GUILTY TO SEX CHARGE

Roger Allen Barr had been charged with rape, but prosecutors agreed to reduce the charge as part of a plea agreement reached in Roanoke Circuit Court.

The case was unusual in that Barr, the 18-year-old victim and most of the witnesses in a Roanoke home where the crime occurred are deaf.

Barr, 21, watched an interpreter use sign language as Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Joel Branscom summarized the evidence against him:

The 18-year-old woman, who had met Barr at the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind in Staunton, visited him with a friend at his Eastern Avenue Northeast home Feb. 5. The woman said Barr raped her in an upstairs bedroom.

But Barr - whose convictions for impersonating a police officer are not related to the sexual battery charge - told authorities that the woman consented to sex.

At a preliminary hearing in March, the woman's testimony raised questions about how much she resisted Barr's advances.

Assistant Public Defender Marian Kelley said the woman's testimony "consisted of what could be regarded as no sign of resistance." Kelley added that the woman did not become upset about the incident until after she was accused by a friend of having sex with a married man.

Branscom agreed that "the facts are in dispute, and that is one reason for the plea agreement."

Both Branscom and Kelley have said that problems communicating with the people involved in the case made it more difficult to try, and that details from both the defendant's and victim's statements may have been lost in translation.

While he was free on bond after the sexual attack, Barr was charged with impersonating a police officer by using a flashing blue light on his car to stop motorists in Franklin County.

Barr told the motorists they were speeding and asked for their driver's licenses, police said at the time. But his impaired speech immediately made the motorists suspicious, and they all drove away without incident.

A Franklin County judge sentenced Barr to three years in jail for those offenses.