Grant Williams Robicheaux, left, and Cerissa Laura Riley, right, appear in court in February 2020. (Screengrab via CBS Los Angeles)
A judge in California on Friday threw out rape charges against a high-profile couple who, for several years, have faced claims by a former prosecutor that they systematically met, drugged, and then sexually assaulted a massive number of women – all while recording themselves doing it.
Dr. Grant William Robicheaux, 41, and his girlfriend Cerissa Laura Riley, 35, were originally charged in 2018 with sexually assaulting five women on separate occasions beginning in 2016. But, over the years, the allegations became murkier and murkier – the formal charges against them were repeatedly enhanced and pared down.
“There are a substantial number of videos,” then-Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said when charges were filed. “I cannot tell you if it is tens or hundreds, it is certainly more than tens. It appears [the women] are highly intoxicated beyond the ability to consent or resist. They are barely responsive to the defendants’ sexual advances.”
In less than two years, however, the OC’s new district attorney, Todd Spitzer, who Rackauckas previously fired, issued a blistering statement against his predecessor — and former boss — and moved to have the charges against the couple dismissed entirely.
“The prior District Attorney and his chief of staff manufactured this case and repeatedly misstated the evidence to lead the public and vulnerable women to believe that these two individuals plied up to 1,000 women with drugs and alcohol in order to sexually assault them – and videotape the assaults,” Spitzer said in February 2020.
The case, by then, had become part and parcel of the political vendetta between Spitzer and Rackauckas. Orange County district attorney elections are formally nonpartisan. Spitzer has previously been elected to other offices as a Republican. Rackauckas has been appointed to separate offices by Republican governors.
In August 2020, Superior Court Judge Gregory Jones removed the DA’s office from the case and installed the California Attorney General’s office, according to the Orange County Register.
“I have serious questions about the district attorney’s office’s ability to proceed on this case,” Jones reportedly said. “I think they are hopelessly conflicted.”
The judge rubbished the idea of dismissing the case amidst the ongoing and admitted political feud between the two lawyers.
During the 2018 campaign, Spitzer claimed Rackauckas had waited to file the case just before the elections. Rackauackas later admitted in a June 19, 2019 deposition, to using the Robicheaux-Riley prosecution to get media attention to benefit his campaign.
“The public has heard from the politicians,” Jones wrote in an opinion. “The public has never heard from the alleged victims. Any objective analysis of this case leads to the conclusion that these charges should be put before a jury. A back-room dismissal by prosecutors without the alleged victims ever having the opportunity to be heard is contrary to the core values of our legal process and the interests of the public.”
At the time, there were seven formal victims and associated charges. But, authorities said, some 13 women had come forward.
Robicheaux is a well-known doctor who previously appeared on the reality show “Online Dating Rituals of the American Male.”
The couple’s alleged method of predation is as follows: the girlfriend would approach a would-be female victim in a bar, introduce the woman to the doctor, and get her to use some combination of drugs and alcohol.
As the defendants allegedly plied their target with substances, the woman would allegedly get far more inebriated than she expected, authorities said, and past the point of consent. When charges were first filed, Rackauckas highlighted two alleged victims and said there were at least hundreds of different videos in Robicheaux’s possession depicting the women being assaulted.
In July 2021, the California AG’s office moved to have the charges related to two alleged victims’ claims against the couple dismissed. Judge Steve Bromberg approved that request, the Register reported.
Two months before the initial dismissal, the AG’s office had asked for charges related to three additional women to be dropped. By August, Judge Frank Ospino agreed to that request, CBS News LA reported.
With two alleged victims remaining, state prosecutors tried to maintain the shreds of the once-sprawling case against the couple.
“What are the chances that two women, strangers to one another, will describe similar nights years apart?” Deputy Attorney General Namita Patel asked in court, according to the Register. “And what is their motive to make it up?”
On Friday morning, Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael Leversen determined the surgeon and his girlfriend would no longer face any charges related to sexual assault. They still face possession of drugs, firearms, and poisoning-related charges.
Throughout the years, Robicheaux and Riley have simply maintained that they were in an open relationship.
“The evidence introduced at the preliminary hearing reflects that Robicheaux and Riley were in a ‘swinging’ relationship, used and shared drugs and alcohol, and sometimes invited other women to join them in sex. None of that makes them rapists,” defense attorneys wrote in a recently-filed court brief obtained by the Register. “The government’s case rests on the unfounded assumption that anyone who engages in casual sex while drinking and using drugs also intends to rape anyone who elects to party with them but ultimately opts not to join them in a sexual encounter.”
Alberto Luperon contributed to this report.
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