photo by: Kansas Sex Offender Registry

Ray C. Atkins Jr.

A Douglas County judge on Monday ordered a man who was granted probation in 2022 after a jury convicted him of rape to serve his original prison sentence after numerous probation violations.

The man, Ray C. Atkins Jr., 24, of Lawrence, was convicted of one felony count of rape in August 2022 for an incident on July 19, 2019, in Lawrence. He was sentenced in November of 2022 to nearly 13 years in prison by Senior Judge James Fleetwood, but Fleetwood granted a dispositional departure motion from Atkins’ then attorney, Nicholas David, and suspended that term to just five years of probation, a ruling that the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office appealed.

Judge Blake Glover revoked Atkins’ probation Monday after ruling in October that Atkins had violated multiple conditions of his probation, including failing to schedule sex-offender treatment and failing multiple drug screens for cocaine, as the Journal-World reported.

Glover said that he reviewed testimony given at Atkins’ sentencing hearing. He said that Fleetwood had made the departure ruling based on Atkins’ cognitive disabilities and because the clinical psychologist, Gregory Nawalanic, who performed several cognitive and sex-evaluation tests on Atkins, said that Atkins could be safely returned into society so long as Atkins underwent sex-offender treatment.

The victim, who was 17 at the time of the crime, and her family attended Monday’s hearing via Zoom but did not make a statement. The victim did not attend the original sentencing hearing in 2022. She had informed the court that morning that she was traveling from Wichita and was running late and asked the court to delay the hearing long enough for her to arrive to make a statement. Fleetwood declined to delay.

Glover said that Fleetwood made the point at that hearing that Atkins should attend sex-offender treatment “as though his life depended on it.”

Glover said that since Atkins didn’t even attempt to schedule the treatment until August of this year, after the state asked the court to revoke his probation, that it was clear that Atkins had not followed through with Fleetwood’s order.

“Mr. Atkins got an opportunity a lot of people don’t get,” Glover said.

Atkins’ current attorney, Branden Smith, argued that it was too early in Atkins’ five-year probation term to revoke him. He said that it would take someone with Atkins’ mental disabilities longer to arrange and execute all of the treatment orders. Smith added that Atkins was engaged in his drug-treatment program but that addiction is not a “flip you can switch” on and off.

The state, represented by Deputy District Attorney Joshua Seiden, said that it was clear from the start that Atkins was not interested in complying with the court’s orders. Seiden said that at sentencing Atkins assured the court that if he was given the chance at probation that he would complete any and all treatment recommendations and that he was “all in.”

He said that Atkins showed he wasn’t “all in” from the beginning after Atkins tested positive for alcohol and cocaine at his first probation meeting in November of 2022, despite spending over a year in the county jail waiting for trial before he was released on bond in May of 2022.

“The court’s orders have no impact. He is going to do what he feels like doing,” Seiden said.

Atkins spoke briefly on Monday to say that he was sorry to his “family, his probation officer, the courts and the government,” and that he “hoped and prayed for forgiveness.”

“Give me a second chance so that I can right my wrongs,” Atkins said.

Seiden said that Smith and Atkins see the current situation as an opportunity for a second chance but that second chance was already given over a year ago.

“At some point, there are no more chances,” Seiden said.

Seiden said that if the court continued to allow Atkins to repeatedly violate probation without consequence, then it would send a message to the victims of sex crimes that even if they report the crime, go to trial, and a jury convicts the accused, then the court could still set aside the pain and anguish the victim has experienced and allow the culprit to go free.

Glover said that the lack of effort to secure sex-offender treatment and the repeated cocaine use were sufficient to show that Atkins was not a good candidate for probation. Glover said that the last failed drug screen showed both cocaine and fentanyl use.

“He knows he’s not supposed to be using those substances and still chooses to do so. Not until this year did he reach out to Clinical Associates (a sex-offender treatment provider),” Glover said.

Glover then revoked Atkins’ probation and ordered him to serve his original 155 month prison sentence, just short of 13 years. Glover awarded Atkins 525 days of time served, or about 17.5 months, for time Atkins spent in jail before his trial and since his arrest for the probation violations in August of this year.

As the Journal-World previously reported, the Wichita teen was visiting her sister in July 2019, a student at the University of Kansas, and after a pool party the sister left the teen alone with two men, Atkins and a man she knew only as “Vonnie,” later identified as Servando Martinez Vazquez.

The victim testified at trial that while her sister was away Atkins forced himself on her and when she cried to Vazquez for help, Vazquez told her “That’s not my problem,” and left the room. The victim said that Atkins then kept her in the room until the sister came home.