Assault pattern cited

Court sets high bail for a man
accused of beating a prostitute

Just two months after he was released from prison in February for beating a prostitute and fracturing her vertebrae in 1993, Michael Lee Carter is charged with sexually assaulting another prostitute, police say.

An Oahu grand jury indicted Carter, 36, on Tuesday with first- and third-degree sexual assault and second-degree impersonation of a police officer in a March 21 incident.

The court granted the state's request to set bail at $500,000 after prosecutors detailed two other, similar attacks during the next couple of months.

In the March attack, Carter allegedly picked up a prostitute downtown, drove her to a nearby shipyard and sexually assaulted her, Deputy Prosecutor Vickie Kapp told the court. "He roughed her up, kicked her out of his car, telling her not to call police because he is police," Kapp said.

Carter was arrested on Nuuanu Avenue on Sept. 15 after two downtown prostitutes spotted him driving in the area and pointed him out to police as the man who had attacked them earlier this year in separate incidents.

After his arrest, Carter told police he could not help himself, Kapp said.

Carter is also accused of picking up another downtown prostitute and beating her in April. The latest incident allegedly happened in May, when he picked up a woman in Wahiawa and tried to have sex with her before she fought him off, Kapp said.

Carter has not been charged in the other two incidents.

Carter, a former Navy engineer, violated numerous terms of his probation while in Ohio and had his probation revoked after the probation officer there requested that Hawaii take him back. The probation officer, in her reports, noted that the community needed to be protected from Carter, whom she described as a "violent and dangerous sex offender."

Carter was resentenced here for the remaining term of his probation and was released Feb. 7.