Kapaa man sentenced for assault

LIHUE — A year ago, Robert Bihm faced up to 70 years in prison if convicted of the rape and kidnapping charges against him. He was sentenced Tuesday to five years in jail for second-degree assault.

Bihm was indicted last January, based on the testimony of his ex-girlfriend, who told a grand jury that he held her hostage in a cabin, brutally beating and raping her over the course of several hours before she escaped.

According to a transcript of the Fifth Circuit grand jury proceedings, Bihm’s accuser said the alleged rape, kidnapping and assault happened on Sunday, Jan. 14, 2018. Her account of the day began when she and Bihm drove down from his family’s cabin in Koke‘e to buy supplies.

Grand jury testimony

The witness said Bihm’s erratic behavior started when he instigated an altercation with another man in the Lawai 7-Eleven parking lot and later punched her car windshield and rear-view mirror at a gas station in Eleele.

Later in the evening, when the couple was alone in the cabin, the witness said Bihm sunk into a jealous rage and cut off her access to the outside world.

“He said that he wanted to marry me one day, but no wife of his was going to have a phone, so I better get used to that,” she told the grand jury.

The witness said Bihm then grabbed her hair, pulled her to the ground and started hitting her “with both of his fists back and forth,” before moving a sofa to block the door.

“He sat on the ottoman and he said that I wasn’t leaving, I wasn’t going anywhere. And he said I dare you try to get up, don’t try to move,” she said.

Bihm made her bring him drinks and cigarettes, beating her again after she stopped him from putting one out on her face, she told the grand jury. Then, she said he forced her sit on the floor close to him, “because if he felt like getting up and hitting and kicking me, I need to be within reach.”

According to her testimony, Bihm continued to beat his ex-girlfriend at random intervals for the next few hours. At some point in the evening, he broke her nose.

“Blood was pouring everywhere,” she said. “And he sat down and he was laughing.”

Death threats and insults accompanied the physical assault, according to transcript. The witness said Bihm threatened to put her “headfirst in the wood chipper” and told her she “would never leave the mountain.”

Then, the woman said, the rape began. She described a series of sexual assaults accompanied by beatings that went on until she was on the verge of losing consciousness.

“I saw like black and white, just the room seemed like it was going to fade away. Just woozy, I was dizzy. I’m sure I had a concussion at that point,” she said.

Hours later, she saw an opportunity to escape.

“He had been drinking a whole bottle of vodka during this whole incident, a whole bottle of champagne and beer. And he fell asleep,” she said. “When he started snoring, I reached with my toes and I found my shorts.”

The witness said she was eventually able to muster the strength to stand and grab her keys from the bedroom. She let herself out of the cabin’s side door and drove down the hill to the emergency room at Kauai Veterans Memorial Hospital.

‘Witness may have been threatened’

Less than three weeks after her grand jury testimony, Bihm’s ex-girlfriend recanted. She submitted a handwritten letter in February withdrawing her complaints against Bihm, in which she said her memory of the episode was a manufactured product of her post traumatic stress disorder.

“I had a flashback from a previous relationship and Rob Bihm is innocent. On the night in question I was consuming alcohol which I am not supposed to do,” she wrote.

Prosecutors were suspicious.

At a court hearing in March, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Kimberly Torigoe told a judge the state did not intend to reduce or dismiss the charges against Bihm, “as there is reasonable information that the complaining witness may have been threatened” by members of Bihm’s family.

In a motion opposing Bihm’s request for a bail reduction, Torigoe wrote that the witness told a member of the YWCA’s Domestic Violence Prevention Task Force that Bihm’s family “is threatening her, and she is getting a lot of heat if she testifies.”

Prosecutors filed further charges, alleging Bihm repeatedly violated a restraining order prohibiting him from contacting his ex-girlfriend and threatened her on the day she testified before the grand jury. He pleaded no contest to violating a restraining order and was sentenced to a year in jail.

The second charge — terroristic threatening — was dropped. The woman sent a letter withdrawing her complaint in that case as well.

“I did not and do not feel threatened by Robert Bihm,” she wrote. “Any words he may have spoken have been misconstrued, as he is not eloquent and does not have the education adequate enough to express his feelings.”

Her letter concluded, “we should all not take inside jokes between couple so seriously.”

A plea bargain

Prosecutors continued to move forward with the case, and court proceedings went on for months, as the two sides haggled over what evidence would be admissible at trial. After almost ten months of pretrial negotiations, a deal was reached. Bihm pleaded no contest to second-degree assault, and prosecutors dropped the sex assault and kidnapping charges.

Why the case was settled before it went to trial remains a matter of contention.

According to Kauai County Prosecuting Attorney Justin Kollar, Bihm was offered the plea bargain when it became apparent to prosecutors that their witness could not be convinced to take the stand, essentially negating their chances of reaching a guilty verdict at trial.

“The victim in the case, despite extensive efforts, did not want to participate in the prosecution and asked us to resolve the case in this manner,” Kollar said in a written statement Tuesday.

Bihm’s defense attorney, Emmanuel Guerrero, said the rape and kidnapping allegations were dropped because they were baseless to begin with. He said his client doesn’t deny physically assaulting his ex-girlfriend — “he threw something against the wall, and it hit her” — but called the rape allegations a “total fabrication.”

Guerrero repeatedly denied there is any substance to the accusations that Bihm or his family threatened the victim or coerced her into refusing to testify and said that as far as he knew, she was willing to take the stand.

Kollar said the prosecutors in his office tried to push their witness to cooperate, but in the end, decided to err on the side of sensitivity to the victim.

“We did everything we could to get her to move forward with this case,” Kollar said. “But sometimes people get scared and get stressed.”

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Caleb Loehrer, staff writer, can be reached at 245-0441 or cloehrer@thegardenisland.com.