By Scott B. Wong
Daily Bruin Staff
A man who pled guilty to making more than 100 obscene phone
calls to female UCLA students was sentenced to a year in county
jail and three years probation, the Los Angeles City
Attorney’s office announced Monday.
Wallace Bouier, 42, who was convicted of sexually harassing 117
female students on the phone at USC last year, was taken into
custody Saturday night at the Los Angeles International Airport,
where he works as a baggage handler, according to a statement from
Los Angeles City Attorney Jim Hahn.
Deputy City Attorney Michele Anderson, who is heading the case,
said she pursued the harshest sentence for Bouier in the bargaining
process.
“Typically in misdemeanor land, the most we can get is a
year,” Anderson said. “But that’s what I expected
and requested.”
In the future, if Bouier violates probation or commits the same
crime, he could receive up to 5 years in jail, Anderson said.
Bouier’s private criminal defense attorney, Brent H.
Merritt, said he thought the sentence was too severe for the
crime.
“In the end, the decision was Mr. Bouier’s, not
mine,” Merritt said of the plea bargain. “The situation
could have gotten worse rather than better if he hadn’t
accepted the offer.”
In the middle of serving three years of counseling for sexual
compulsion, alcohol and drug abuse, Bouier was arrested and charged
with 109 counts of making obscene and annoying telephone calls to
UCLA students, a probation violation that could have landed him 15
months in county jail.
Students began receiving sexually explicit phone calls on July
18, Anderson said. Over the course of five months, 109 sexual calls
were reported to university police by victims, but according to
UCPD Lt. Manny Garza, there may have been more.
“There’s an indication that calls have been
underreported,” Garza said. “We were expecting a lot
more.”
In his calls to UCLA students, Bouier dialed telephone numbers
of dormitories which contain the same 267-prefix. Calls were
generally made between 1:30 and 4:30 a.m.
Merritt argued in Bouier’s defense that the repeated
sexual calls were a compulsive behavior.
Bouier did not issue a statement, but Merritt said the reason
his client targeted the university was obvious.
“The university is an easy place to start if you were
wanting to make phone calls to women,” Merritt said.
Dorm residents were not informed of the caller during the course
of the investigation, Garza said, because police believed the calls
posed no immediate threat to students.
“All calls were sexual in nature, but there was not a
concern for students’ safety,” he said.
UCPD, the lead investigator, placed traps on some dormitory
phone lines after students reported they were receiving repeated
calls. At 4:57 a.m. on Oct. 21, police traced a sexually explicit
call to Bouier’s residence.
On Dec. 21, he was arrested and booked by UCPD on charges of an
unrelated traffic warrant and further questioned about the phone
calls, Garza said. Later that day, police served a search warrant
at Bouier’s residence.
More than three months elapsed before police arrested Bouier for
the obscene calls. As with many search warrants, Garza said, those
for phone companies take a long time to obtain.
“Once we got more evidence that (Bouier) had committed a
crime, we issued a search warrant for specific phone
records,” he said.
According to Garza, each week UCPD receives many cases of 653M
reports, which are defined as threatening or annoying phone calls
or e-mails.
“E-mails are becoming more prevalent and are happening on
a regular basis,” he said. “It’s not an unusual
crime on campus.”