Former L.A. County sheriff's deputy gets life for attacking wife, man

A former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy was sentenced Friday to multiple life sentences for a depraved attack in which he tortured and sexually assaulted his wife and another man, prosecutors in Orange County said.

Robert Avery McClain, 38, was sentenced to four consecutive life terms and an additional 16 years and nine months for the September 2008 attack on his 31-year-old wife and the man with whom he believed she was having an affair, according to the Orange County district attorney's office.

McClain was convicted in May of felony counts of aggravated mayhem, torture, forcible oral copulation, attempted sexual penetration by a foreign object by force, spousal rape by force, sodomy, false imprisonment and domestic battery with corporal injury.

The jury also agreed with multiple sentencing enhancements because of the use of a deadly weapon and the brutal nature of the attack. In addition, the jury also found him to be legally sane at the time of the attack, a statement from prosecutors said.

On Sept. 28, 2008, prosecutors said, the Irvine resident asked his wife and mother of his four children to take him to the apartment complex where she worked and the man lived.

McClain led the victims to a kitchenette in the back of a leasing office, where he beat the man unconscious, tried to force his wife to castrate the man, cut both of them with a knife and then sexually assaulted both with the same knife, prosecutors said.

He left with his wife, the man still lying on the floor in a pool of blood, and drove to a secluded area where he raped her, cut off her hair and tried to force her to cut her own face, prosecutors said.

McClain took her back to their Irvine home, where she tried to escape as he slept. But, prosecutors said, he woke up and tackled her, breaking her clavicle and knocking her out. She later escaped and drove to a hospital, where staff called police. 

The man was discovered by a cleaning crew the next morning. He'd suffered brain damage, multiple bone fractures in his face, excessive blood loss, stab wounds in his groin area and lacerations on his face and arms, prosecutors said.

His jaw had to be wired shut, and authorities said it took him months to relearn how to walk and talk.

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-- Rick Rojas

Photo: Robert Avery McClain. Credit: Orange County Sheriff's Department