By SHAYLA ESCUDERO/Lincoln Chronicle
NEWPORT – A former Taft High School employee will spend 18 months in prison for raping a 15-year-old male student.
A handful of Angela R. Schafer’s supporters watched Tuesday as she pled guilty in Lincoln County circuit court to third-degree rape and furnishing alcohol to a minor. Schafer’s plea came after mounting evidence from forensic interviews, text exchanges and a search of her Lincoln City apartment following her arrest last November.
In the hope of forgoing a prison sentence, Schafer’s defense drew testimony from a therapist, detailing her history of sexual abuse and candidacy for treatment.
With child sex abuse often underreported by boys, Lincoln County Circuit Judge Sheryl Bachart said the case represented the importance of empowering child victims and recognizing people who commit sex abuse can look like anyone and hold important positions within a community.
What happened?
The 15-year-old boy told a Taft High coach that he had been given alcohol and marijuana by the then 52-year-old school health services advocate, before she had sex with him at her apartment. At the time, the boy’s father was in the hospital and he was staying with another relative.
“The defendant took advantage of the victim in a vulnerable situation with his father in the hospital and life being a little bit more chaotic than the average student,” district attorney Jenna Wallace said at Tuesday’s sentencing hearing. “She used her daughter’s age as an excuse or a reason as to why she could have him over to her house, as to why she could be driving around spending time with him, and ultimately, she really did abuse that position of authority over him.”
Wallace shared text messages between Schafer and the victim, details from interviews with the victim and other Taft High School staff. After the coach reported the incident, officers searched Schafer’s apartment, finding a framed photograph of the victim and matching marijuana pipes he described.
In the victim’s interview, Wallace said, the boy wondered if what happened to him would happen to anyone else.
When detectives interviewed Taft employees they disclosed red flags to Schafer’s behavior. Employees witnessed close behavior between Schaefer and the victim and had concerns that she was close to other boys as well. Some employees reported their concerns about her transporting boys in her car and pulling them out for one-on-one time during class. There were some instances where students couldn’t be located because Schafer didn’t update their whereabouts in a school tracking system.
Those students were interviewed, Wallace said, but did not disclose any sexual abuse.
“The evidence is clear, she took advantage of someone much, much younger than her, who she met and was supposed to be providing care for in the sense of employment, and it very quickly translated into something sexual with almost a 40-year age gap,” Wallace said.
Schafer’s defense
In an effort to avoid prison time, Schafer’s defense called therapist Dr. Cynthia Steinhauser of Lake Oswego who conducted a psychosexual analysis, detailing Schafer’s own history of being sexually abused as a child.
Some of Schafer’s supporters held onto each other and shed tears as they listened to the testimony.
Because there are fewer female sex offenders there isn’t a statistically valid way to assess the likelihood of female offenders reoffending, Steinhauser said. But, she said, female sex offenders are less likely to reoffend than male offenders and their rate of recidivism declines with treatment.
Steinhauser said she had no reason to believe Schafer’s victim wasn’t telling the truth. Studies show that 1 percent of child and adult sexual abuse victims have fabricated their stories, she said.
“The crimes are egregious, but incarceration is not going to address the reasons that she offended, nor is it going to prevent her from reoffending in the future,” Steinhauser said. “Incarceration is just going to make her a better criminal.”
She recommended that Schafer be enrolled in a female sex offender treatment program with little to no prison time.
Schafer gave a tearful apology admitting to her actions and her commitment to self-reflection therapy and treatment programs. Several letters of support were also given to Bachart, who stepped out of the room to read them before issuing her judgment.
Judgment time
Bachart did not dismiss the pain Schafer endured as a child and said that she didn’t have any reason not to believe the defense’s testimony.
Bachart said during her time on the bench she had seen trauma manifest in different ways, time and again. And time and again, Bachart said, she has seen the damage when children are not believed.
“It was troubling to read some of the letters of support here from people just convinced because they knew that you couldn’t possibly have done this,” Bachart said.
“This case has been pending for quite some time … and people who have written letters on your behalf just couldn’t believe that you would do something like this, because you’re such a role model, such a wonderful person in the community – it drives home that you never know who’s capable of doing this.”
There is no particular type of person who is capable of committing these crimes, Bachart said. There were some statistics shared about abuse victims, the judge said, but what wasn’t mentioned was how rare it is for male victims to come forward to report the crime.
“He’s incredibly courageous for making the disclosure and trusting that somebody would do the right thing,” she said. “And that’s what prevents a lot of children from disclosing, is the embarrassment of making the disclosure and then trusting that the person will do the right thing with the information, and too often — more often than not — adults fail children.”
Bachart noted that the abuse happened in February 2024, Schafer was arrested in November and didn’t start seeking drug and alcohol treatment until this February. These factors helped her make a judgment when someone was truly wanting to change or just avoiding prison, Bachart said.
Another factor she had to weigh was community safety, the judge said.
“You deliberately used your position of trust and professional responsibility in committing sexual abuse against a child, you were an employee of Taft High School when this child was a vulnerable student, and he had a particular vulnerability that you were aware of when committing this offense,” Bachart said.
Bachart sentenced Schafer to 18 months prison and Schafer was taken into custody and began serving her sentence Tuesday. Schafer will also be required to register as a sex offender, complete an alcohol and drug treatment program, and pay a $8,500 fine.
- Shayla Escudero covers Lincoln County government, education, Newport, housing and social services for Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at Shayla@LincolnChronicle.org
