Photo: Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office
A former crew member on NBC’s long-running supernatural dramaGrimmhas pleaded guilty to multiple rapes and sex assaults involving 11 women and children and committed over nine years in the Portland, Oregon, area, PEOPLE confirms.
Thomas Oliver, 37, was sentenced Friday to 30 years in prison for the crimes, which the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office says he committed against women who were friends or acquaintances and included those with whom he connected on a website and a dating app. Six of the victims were reportedly underage.
“It’s taken many long and difficult years to get to this day,” one survivor of Oliver’s assaults said in her victim impact statement,according to the district attorney’s office. “In my mind, this sentence is for everyone you have ever hurt whether their names are on a piece of paper or not.”
Standing before the judge in a Portland courtroom on Friday, Oliver said, “I’d like to express my godly sorrow to the court, the community of Portland and my victims,” according to a video posting of his statement onOregonLive.com.
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Senior Deputy District Attorney JR Ujifusa, who prosecuted this case, called Oliver “a coward and a predator” who “used alcohol as a weapon.” Ujifusa added during the sentencing hearing: “He preyed on women who were young and vulnerable and women he purchased to use as objects for his own satisfaction.”
Oliver’s public defender, DeAnna Horne, says Oliver has been in a 12-step program for sex addiction during his incarceration following his May 2017 arrest. She says he accepted a plea deal to avoid further harm that a trial would inflict on all those involved.
There is no intention to appeal the conviction and sentencing, she says.
At the time the charges against him were made public in May 2017, Oliver was a prominent photographer and videographer in Portland and co-founder of the live-music videography siteInto The Woods, according to the local newspaperWillamette Week, for which he had also worked as a freelancer.
It could not be immediately determined how long he had worked as a cameraman forGrimm, which at the time of his arrest Oliver listed on his social media as his most recent job, theWeekreported.
Oliver specifically pleaded guilty to and was sentenced for five counts of first-degree rape, three counts of first-degree sodomy, two counts of using a child in a display of sexually explicit conduct and sexual abuse in the first degree and one count each of first-degree unlawful sexual penetration and first-degree attempted rape, according to the prosecutor’s office.
Another survivor of Oliver’s assaults said during his sentencing last week that he no longer holds power over her or any others.
“You were just a bad Tinder date,” she said, according to the prosecutor’s office. “I rarely thought about you before this and I’ll probably forget your exact name in a few years. I’m here to say that you going away is the only thing to give me solace.”
“Mr. Oliver will be an old man when he re-enters society, and a very old man if he lives long enough to be off supervision,” said the prosecutor. “I hope that during those decades that he will think about the pain he has caused these victims and better himself.”
source: people.com
