Former RMA director facing Wyoming sex charges | |
March 29, 2017 | |
Addison, a certified addictions counselor who led RMA from September 2004 until his mutually agreed upon separation from the private school in Naples for undisclosed "issues and complications," has pled not guilty to charges including first degree sexual assault, blackmail, attempted blackmail, felonious assault and 20 counts of sexual exploitation of a child. He remains in custody in the Albany County Detention Center on $50,000 cash bond. If convicted on all counts, he could face life in prison. According to the Laramie Boomerang, Addison was working as a therapist in Laramie with the firm Pendley & Associates. An investigation was launched against him in October, 2016, after a woman told Laramie police that she met Addison at his home in September, where, she said, she was beaten, tied up, sexually assaulted and photographed nude. Addison threatened to send the photographs to others if she told anyone, the woman told investigators. During a subsequent warrant search of his home, physical evidence was seized that police say corroborates the alleged victim's report, and electronics also taken were found to contain large numbers of sexually explicit images of Addison and several women, including the woman who made the initial report. Police detectives made contact with a number of the women in those images, and four, all of whom knew him by different names, came forward and lodged official complaints. One of the women was 17 at the time she was allegedly assaulted. Addison's resignation from Rocky Mountain Academy was announced in late November, 2004, and on December 28, he was charged in Boundary County with DUI, felony injury to a child and failure to give immediate notice of an accident. On April 25, 2005, he was convicted of inattentive driving and an amended misdemeanor charge of injury to a child, the additional charges dismissed. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail, suspended, fined $363.50 and given one year unsupervised probation. After leaving RMA, Addison eventually moved to Boise, working as a grant officer for the Idaho Council on Domestic Violence and Victim's Assistance from February to July, 2007 before being fired after accusing a female supervisor of discrimination after he allegedly broke off a sexual affair with her. A subsequent lawsuit was settled out of court in 2009, with him receiving $28,000. In 2010, he went to work for the Ada County drug and veterans' courts until allegations were raised of sexual impropriety in 2014 and he was fired, though no criminal charges were brought. His 2015 lawsuit against Ada County, which includes allegations that he was sexually discriminated against because he is a man and that his employer failed to accommodate his bipolar disorder, is pending. |