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The Associated Press

CHARLOTTE, N.C.- Chris Abril will be sworn in Dec. 4 as the sheriff of Polk County. A month later, he will appear in court to face charges he raped two girls, ages 10 and 11, nearly 20 years ago.
Arrested in the middle of his campaign, the 45-year-old Democrat pressed ahead and won election by a comfortable margin last week, insisting the charges were a politically motivated attack by his GOP rivals in the mostly rural county of horse farms and bed-and-breakfast inns on the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
"I am not capable of committing these crimes," Abril, the police chief in Columbus, told supporters at a rally shortly after he was charged in August with statutory rape and sexual offense.
Voters apparently agreed, electing Abril by eight points over two-term incumbent David Satterfield.
If Abril is convicted after taking office as sheriff, he will be removed. He is on suspension from his job as police chief while the charges are pending.
The Republican district attorney, Jeff Hunt, denied the charges were connected in any way to the election, and said the case was brought by North Carolina's attorney general, a Democrat.
"The attorney general came in and took the file, physically," Hunt said. "They made the decision whether to proceed to indictment, and they proceeded. The timing of the thing was up to the attorney general's office. They knew they had a choice of doing it before or after the election."
Hunt said he learned of a single rape allegation against Abril earlier this year from the State Bureau of Investigation, and after he started looking into the case, he soon found out about a second alleged victim.
"When she seemed to be a very solid claimant, then I realized that from that point on I should recuse myself, and that's what I did," Hunt said.
Abril has said the girls were neighbors of his at the time of the alleged crimes.
In an interview that aired shortly after Abril's arrest, one of his accusers told Asheville TV station WLOS that he took her virginity when she was 11. The timing of the election "doesn't take away from the fact that it actually happened," said the woman, who did not appear on camera.
Polk County, population 19,000, is in what is known as the Thermal Belt, because the weather is so pleasant all year round. It is about 80 miles west of Charlotte and 20 miles north of Spartanburg, S.C., and has become a popular destination for retirees.
Former District Attorney Alan Leonard, now retired, said he, the sheriff's department and the state investigated one of the rape allegations against Abril in the early 1990s, but "we didn't have evidence that we felt would come close to convincing a jury of Mr. Abril's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."
Jeff Byrd, longtime publisher of Tryon Daily Bulletin newspaper, said many in the county concluded that the revival of the two-decade-old charges had to be politically motivated and the work of Satterfield's backers.
Abril "is about as gentle a spirit as you'd meet," the newspaperman said. "The folks who know him and know him well are just convinced it can't be so."
In an editorial this week, Byrd pronounced Abril's election "a strong repudiation of the notion that any power brokers should ever be able to manipulate a local election."


Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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