Sun, Aug. 20, 1995

WENATCHEE, Wash. - Take a scene from a Norman Rockwell painting and drop it into a Stephen King novel and you might get an idea of what has happened to this idyllic Columbia River town, once famous only for its annual Apple Blossom Festival.

You sense no lurking evil when you wander along Wenatchee Avenue through the heart of town. There is no mood of foreboding among the tall shade trees of Riverfront Park where children play hide-and-seek on warm summer afternoons.

Yet for a year this all-American town, once voted among the best places in the country to live, has been the backdrop for a string of horrifying events that led some to rue a loss of innocence and the local newspaper to headline: "Bad News Beyond Imagination."

"This has been kind of like losing your innocence," said Robert Hughes, the town's director of planning and development. "In other places this would have been at the back of the paper. The reason it was news here was because things like this don't happen here."

But the bad things did happen here, and all of them happened in the course of about a year.

The pastor of a local church and his wife were accused of organizing child sex orgies in the church basement, allegedly arranging for parishioners to have sexual relations with children - sometimes incestuously - after Friday Bible services.

Two local 12-year-old boys poured 18 rounds from their rifles into a homeless man, killing him after, they said, he threw rocks at them as he walked along a river bank. They were sentenced to a juvenile prison until they are 21.

The ex-wife and teenage daughter of the local Rotary Club president were sexually mutilated and murdered in their home, allegedly by a drifter who appeared to have acted randomly and without motive. His trial is pending.

A quarry accident poured tons of rock and gravel onto a local highway, killing a man and a 5-year-old boy.

A fire destroyed 187,000 acres of the Wenatchee National Forest and burned 39 homes to the ground.

And a local psychologist said on national TV that he had 700 patients taking the antidepressant drug Prozac and that they were a lot happier now.

"All this has caused everyone to stop and reflect, but I don't think the town is going to hell," said Hughes.

"There has been a lot of denial in the community, especially about the church sex scandal."

Indeed, the accusations against Robert Roberson, pastor of the Church of God House of Prayer, and his wife, Connie, have provided the greatest shock to this picture-postcard town of 24,000 people.

The two were arrested in March and charged with 10 counts of child rape and molestation and with having organized the sex ring.

In all, nearly two dozen people have been charged with rape and molestation in connection with the Robersons. So far, 11 have pleaded guilty, and three others have been convicted by juries.

The Robersons' trial is scheduled to start Sept. 11.

Police and Chelan County prosecutors charge that the molestations have been going on for years and that parents not only sexually assaulted their own children but also shared them with other adults.

Much of the information in the case has come from children who said they were involved, and initially from a 10-year- old girl who has been in the foster care of the chief police investigator in the case, Detective Bob Perez.

Perez, who has declined comment, began his probe after the girl took him to places where she said she had been molested by her parents and others and described what had happened.

Attorneys for the accused charge the police and child welfare authorities with being overzealous and with having based their conclusions on faulty information from the alleged victims.

"This is a farce," said attorney William Parker, who represents Connie Roberson. "These people are totally innocent. The police are so far out on a limb now that they can't go back."

Sources close to the defense case said that many of the accused had subnormal intelligence, some with IQs of 50 or less, and that they were innocent and incapable of understanding the charges against them.

While the town braces for the Robersons' trial and that of the drifter accused in the double slayings, many people in Wenatchee are trying to understand what has happened and look forward to a future very different from the recent past.

"We have had some bad things happen," said Wenatchee Mayor Earl Tilly. "We have had children sexually molested, incestuously molested. This is a Norman Rockwell kind of a place. Other people have become more calloused. We were just not ready for all this."

Other residents are stoic.

"Of course you worry, but then again, don't most people have to worry these days?," said Alice Motler, 32, sitting in Riverfront Park, near a stretch of river bank.

"Wenatchee is still a lot better than most other places," she said as her 6-year-old son, Todd, ran about between the shade trees. Mayor Tilly would like to see Wenatchee return to its former source of fame.

"I really wish people would pay a little more attention to the Apple Blossom Festival," he said.

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