More than a dozen “potential credible victims” have contacted prosecutors in the days since a well-known Newport Beach surgeon and his girlfriend were charged with drugging and raping two women, Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas announced Friday.
Grant William Robicheaux, 38, and Cerissa Laura Riley, 31, are accused of sexually assaulting one woman in April 2016 and a second one in October 2016, each time meeting the victim in a Newport Beach restaurant or bar and bringing her back to Robicheaux’s apartment, prosecutors said.
In a news conference on Friday in Santa Ana, Rackauckas said his office has now received more than 50 phone calls in connection to the case, including leads pointing toward another dozen-plus potential victims.
Rackauckas said one of the allegations dates back more than a decade, and some may have occurred out of state. The district attorney also said investigators now believe that Robicheaux may have met some possible victims on dating or social-media websites, not just at bars, restaurants or events.
“Even if you made a conscious decision to party with this couple, no one, no one gets a pass to get their way with you when you are unconscious or past the point of consent,” Rackauckas said of his message to potential victims. “There is nothing to be ashamed of.”
Attorneys for the couple have denied that any non-consensual sex occured. Robicheaux, a Newport Beach resident, is an orthopedic surgeon who has appeared on the Bravo television show “Online Dating Rituals of the American Male,” while Riley, a Brea resident, has been an educator.
Rackauckas, when first announcing the charges on Tuesday, noted that investigators have found thousands of images and videos of apparently intoxicated women believed to have been filmed by Robicheaux and Riley and learned the pair had traveled in recent years to large festivals across the country, leading prosecutors to suspect there could be other potential victims.
It wasn’t clear how many of the people who have contacted prosecutors are alleging sexual assault by the couple rather than just Robicheaux. Neither Robicheaux nor Riley have been criminally charged in connection to the other potential victims, and prosecutors have not outlined a timeline for when a decision will be made on whether to file more charges.
“This is going to still take more work because we have to get more and better statements from them (potential victims), we have to compare their statements to evidence in the case,” Rackauckas said. “It’s really important to keep this message out, and to let other women know if they have been victimized by this couple or this doctor to come forward.”
Newport Beach police first learned of the alleged sexual assaults in 2016. The first woman contacted police the day after her alleged encounter at Robicheaux’s apartment, while prosecutors say a second woman woke up at his apartment while being sexually assaulted and screamed for help, resulting in a neighbor calling 911.
According to the Newport Beach Police Department, officers didn’t initially have enough evidence in 2016 to make an arrest, but detectives kept looking into the incidents and in January carried out a search warrant at Robicheaux’s apartment that prosecutors say led to the discovery of a large quantities of drugs such as ecstasy and cocaine and illegal weapons.
Outside the DA’s Office in Santa Ana, following the news conference, Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who is running against incumbent Rackauckas, noted a prosecutor signed off on the search warrant late last year, alleging that the DA’s Office “sat on” the case by failing to either charge the pair or put the call out for potential victims after the warrant was carried out in January.
“The District Attorney’s Office has known about this for almost a year,” Spitzer said. “They had cash, drugs and guns, and they didn’t make an arrest or notify the public.”
In response, DA officials indicated the delay from the search warrant in January to the arrests in September was largely due to technical efforts required to access and process the digital evidence.
“All law enforcement investigations require a full and complete analysis of all available evidence,” DA officials said in a statement. “The very nature of sexual assault cases and the inherent difficulties in investigating such allegations often require additional measures to garner the required corroboration to obtain evidence necessary to fulfill our prosecutorial burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
