THE son of a former assistant sheriff in wealthy Orange County, California, is to be sentenced today to as many as 12 years in prison for leading the sexual assault of a teenage girl on a pool table — a crime that was captured on a 21-minute videotape.

Gregory Haidl and his two friends were 17 at the time of the crime, during which a 16-year-old restaurant hostess was abused with a pool cue, a cigarette and a bottle of Snapple.

During the lurid trial the teenagers claimed that their victim was an aspiring porn star who had agreed to an orgy and was faking unconsciousness. It was Mr Haidl himself who recorded the assault on his Sony Handycam.

The July 2002 assault was all the more controversial because it took place in the garage of the home of Mr Haidl’s father, Don, who was then the Orange County assistant sheriff. He had gone into politics after making a multimillion-dollar fortune from car auctions.

The case bears a resemblance to the plot of The Accused, in which Jodie Foster plays a rape victim with a chequered personal history who is gang-raped on a pinball machine and then seeks to bring to justice her attackers and the bystanders who egged them on. The movie is based on a gang rape in 1983 in a bar in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

The first trial of the case resulted in a deadlocked jury, whose members said that they found the evidence ambiguous.

The defence had put up as a witness a neurologist who minutely analysed the tape and said that the girl’s movements showed that she was alert. At a second trial, the jury convicted the three men of sexual penetration but not rape.

For the past four years, the citizens of Rancho Cucamonga have been unable to escape the aftershocks of the crime.

The accuser, known as Jane Doe in the press, but widely known in the town, was forced to switch high schools. She became addicted to methamphetamine. Leaflets were put up in the town asking for information about her family. The victim, now 20, has since gone through drug rehabilitation.

John Barnett, who represented Kyle Nachreiner, one of the defendants, said that no one had won from the case.

“Everyone will suffer and most of it is not calculable, except that it’s enormous,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “That’s sort of the definition of the classic Greek tragedy, where no one ends up ahead. Everyone loses, and I think that’s where we are.”

The third defendant was Keith Spann. Mr Nachreiner faces up to ten years in jail; Mr Spann could get six years.

The case began when an 18-year-old woman, Lindsay Picou, found the videotape of the incident at a rented beach house. She was so disturbed that she hid the tape in a towel, put it in her car, and later gave it to a police officer.

Ms Picou was regarded locally as a pariah as a result, eventually having to move away from the area. After watching the videotape, she had feared that the unconscious woman was dead. Her mother told The Los Angeles Times: “My daughter was raised in a Christian home and did what she’s supposed to do, and for that, no deed goes unpunished.

“It’s been four years of hell.”

Times Recommends

• Mandela’s tribe threatens President Zuma
• The French empire strikes back
• Wife of cheating governor exacts a political revenge