At that meeting,Wright remarked how calm the girl was and suggested she might be “just upset at a boy and trying to get back at him,” her lawsuit alleges. “Young girls make stuff up like this all the time,” Wright allegedly told the girl and her mother, according to the civil suit. Wright told the mother if she were a “good mom,” she’d find a photo and the full name of her daughter’s abuser so police could find him, according to the suit. Within a few weeks, Wright visited the father’s home and picked up his cellphone, which his daughter had used to communicate with her attacker, according to the suit. Wright told the father then that he didn’t believe the daughter was ever at the hotel, the suit alleges. A couple of months later, Wright returned to the father’s home and told him the investigation hadn’t turned up anything and police couldn’t move forward, the suit says. The 13-year-old identified the hotel where the sexual assault occurred but Umatilla police didn't go the location to investigate, according to court testimony and records.Court record LITTLE INVESTIGATION Wright was among the witnesses called to testify at Lyon’s trial last summer. Under questioning from the prosecutor and defense lawyer, Wright revealed in his sworn testimony how little he did to investigate, according to a court transcript. Wright has worked at the 13-member Umatilla Police Department for more than 30 years. He said he relied on the Comfort Inn manager to review any video from the hotel, asking the manager to search from midnight to 4 a.m. on the night in question, for a man escorting a young girl wearing a blue-hooded windbreaker. Paaso, the prosecutor, asked him, “Did you subpoena or request search warrants for any records from Instagram?” No, Wright responded. “Had you ever, in your career at Umatilla, requested or received a search warrant for social media accounts?” Passo asked. No, Wright said. Lyon’s defense lawyer, Robert Hamilton, continued with his own questions.Did Wright or any Umatilla police officer go to the hotel and view the hotel video? Did Wright get details about the number of cameras that the hotel manager reviewed or angles he reviewed? Did Wright ask for a copy of the surveillance video? Each time Wright answered no. Did Wright examine the father’s cellphone or make a digital copy, Hamilton asked. Wright said he hadn’t. “But had the phone been examined and that SnapChat app been on there … it would have been a good place to try and recover username or account name information, correct?” Hamilton asked. “A possibility,” Wright testified. “So you have no leads from this phone whatsoever?” “Correct.” “But you also didn’t try to get leads from the phone?” “Correct.” The phone sat in a plastic bin in the Umatilla Police Department, Wright’s testimony revealed. On April 19, 2019, without preserving what was on the phone, Wright returned the cellphone to the girl’s father, he said.The father said he never got the phone back. Had Umatilla police gone to the Comfort Inn & Suites after the reported sexual assault in 2018, they could have obtained the name of the man who rented the room where the assault of a 13-year-old girl had occurred. FBI agents two years later obtained the hotel registration invoice.Court record GOOGLED THE FBI Over the next nine months, the girl and her mother worked to gather evidence themselves. The girl continued to endure threats from her attacker, sexual advances online and obscene photos, the prosecutor said. Lyon would contact the girl via a new Snapchat account after she’d block his old ones and sent messages using false names. He would often start a message with “hi babygirl” or “Just call me daddy” and promised to “leak ur nudes everywhere” or kill her and her “whole (expletive) family” if she didn’t delete their online chats, according to court records. He repeated the same mantra: “We both know ages (sic) just a number,” according to court records. The victim testified that Lyon told her he would “rape my sisters in front of me and kill my family” if she stopped communicating with him. In another message, he wrote, “I’ve already talked with my attorney about it. And he assured me that we can make life a living hell for you if you decided to go to the police.” In January 2020, she was able to get a photo of Lyon’s face and his full name. A photo of Michael Wayne Lyon when he was younger in the U.S. Navy.Court record She and her mother went back to Umatilla police, told Wright that her abuser was now threatening to kill the family and that they had multiple chat threads on another cellphone, according to the civil suit. Wright still didn’t believe them and suggested the department would face a lawsuit if he pursued an arrest based on faulty information, according to the civil suit. Now in fear for the family, the girl’s mother turned to Google and found a number for the FBI. At no point did Umatilla police recommend the girl or her mother reach out to the federal agency, the girl’s attorney said. The FBI immediately opened a case, secured multiple warrants for social media platforms, located the hotel registration and car rental invoices with Lyon’s full name and arrested Lyon in Pennsylvania in December 2020. The girl testified at the trial in Portland and a jury convicted him in August. Umatilla Police Chief Darla Huxel referred questions to the city manager. Wright and Umatilla City Manager David Stockdale didn’t return messages and emails seeking their comment on the case or the civil suit’s allegations. Some of the ongoing, online threats Michael Wayne Lyon made to the 13-year-old girl after the sexual assault had occurred. He demanded that she delete their chat messages and if she didn't, he threatened to harm her and her family.Court record ‘NOTHING TO SAY’ At Lyon’s sentencing, the prosecutor called Lyon a child predator who not only targeted the Oregon victim but other girls online, making sexual overtures and convincing them to send him nude photos. Paaso urged a 25-year sentence. The victim told U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut that Lyon “controlled” her. Her father bolted their windows shut to make sure no one could break in, she said. “I used to be a happy, happy kid,” she said. “I lost who I was. Every move I made, everything was controlled by one man, who I didn’t even know, who I met once.” Hamilton, Lyon’s lawyer, argued for a 20-year sentence, saying Lyon has no prior criminal history and would be unlikely to reoffend given his age when he would get out of prison. Lyon declined to address the judge. “I have nothing to say at this time,” he said. Immergut said she considered a 30-year sentence for Lyon recommended by a probation officer, but she accepted the 25-year prison term urged by the prosecution, followed by 10 years of supervised release. She said she considered all the circumstances of the grooming and sexual assault to be quite “egregious,” and made even more disturbing by his sharing of the video of the assault with his victim’s brother and boyfriend. “It’s hard to imagine something more humiliating or traumatizing for a 13-year-old girl,” the judge said. Immergut noted that Lyon has never accepted responsibility or shown remorse. An attorney for the victim and her family filed the civil suit against Umatilla police about an hour after the sentencing. It seeks $23.5 million in punitive damages and $2.5 million in economic damages. “The child suffered immeasurable physical and emotional damage due to the continuing harassment by the predator during the two years she was forced to investigate her own rapist,” the suit says. “This is a direct result of the inaction of the police and their minimal efforts to identify and stop him.” The young woman said she’s continuing to fight to get over the harm done to her, but it haunts her daily. She suffers from panic attacks and anxiety. When she thought she saw someone who looked like her attacker while driving the other day, she said, “I completely broke down.” The 18-year-old is now the mother of a 3-year-old girl; the child is not Lyon’s. As a parent now, she said she “helicopters” her daughter. When her daughter is in the front garden of their home and a car passes by, “I look at that car and I’m like, ‘Who are you?’ I watch everything. I’m constantly on high alert.” https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/20...ly-so-oregon-victims-mom-googled-the-fbi.html
