PD Man Will Stand Trial on Sex Charges

[Editor's note:  story is adult in content and nature]

A Palm Desert man accused of sexually assaulting a female relative and brandishing a firearm at her was ordered today to stand trial.

Kenneth Dean Anderson, 55, is charged with assault with intent to rape,
sodomize or orally copulate and penetration by a foreign object, both felonies,
along with a misdemeanor count of exhibiting a firearm, stemming from the
alleged Dec. 11 attack on the 27-year-old woman.

Riverside County Superior Court Judge Ronald L. Johnston ruled there was
enough evidence for Anderson to stand trial following a 90-minute preliminary
hearing at the court's Indio Annex. Anderson is free on a $50,000 bond and is
due back in court on Oct. 18 for a post-preliminary hearing arraignment.

The woman testified that she was living at Anderson's house in the 73000
block of Guadalupe Avenue when he asked her to get out her sex toys on Dec.
10. She said he had made comments of a sexual nature to her in the past.
The woman said she left the house and returned around 1 a.m. on Dec. 11
to find him in the backyard looking at gay pornography on his laptop. He asked
her to come take a look, and she told him she didn't like it.

"I was a little disgusted,'' the witness said.

She said the next thing she knew, he was behind her, a heavy patio table
was in front of her, and "he's trying to force my pants down.''

She testified she held onto her belt buckle, but he got his hand inside
her pants and underwear and put his fingers in her vagina.

"I was telling him to stop, I was trying to fight to get him off me,
but I was stuck,'' she said.

She said she managed to get away and ran to a neighbor's house across
the street, then went back to Anderson's house a few hours later.

"He ran after me with a gun in his hand,'' she said, adding that she
recognized it as a handgun they had used to go target shooting together a few
days before.

She ran back across the street and hid behind a cement pillar at the
neighbor's house.

"I figured if he tried to shoot me, it would hit a cement pillar,'' she
said.

She testified that she called someone she knew, who called police. She
said Anderson had a drinking problem and had started consuming alcohol that
morning.

Anderson was booked at the Indio jail and posted a $50,000 bond on Dec.
15, according to court records.