After sexually attacking a woman in a restroom inside the King County Courthouse Thursday morning, Clint Jory propositioned a Seattle police detective for sex, according to an attempted second-degree rape charge King County prosecutors on Friday rush-filed against him.
The charges, which note Jory, 35, was released from the King County Jail six days before Thursday’s attempted rape, include a rapid recidivism aggravator. Because the felony charge was filed Friday, Jory did not make an initial court appearance for a probable-cause hearing and he remains jailed in lieu of $750,000 bail, jail and court records show.
He is to be arraigned Aug. 12. Court records don’t yet indicate which attorney is representing him.
Jory was released from jail on July 23 after serving 21 months for indecent liberties with forcible compulsion and three counts of fourth-degree assault, two of them with sexual motivation.
He was arrested in May 2019 after groping one woman as he pinned her to a wall, slapping the buttocks of two other women, and grabbing a fourth woman in a bear hug before she fought him off, court records say. The women were all strangers to Jory and were assaulted in quick succession at their workplaces in Pioneer Square, according to the records.
King County Superior Court Presiding Judge Jim Rogers said Thursday was the worst day at the courthouse since 1995, when a man shot three women, killing two of them, outside a family law courtroom.
He said his bailiff quit because of Thursday’s attempted sexual assault and said he himself was nearly shot on July 15 as he walked through the park on his way home.
Rogers has repeatedly called attention to safety concerns of courthouse employees and visitors due to assaults and threats from residents of a homeless encampment in City Hall Park. He and other judges have called for the immediate closure of the park.
A fatal stabbing occurred in the park on June 17. Both the victim and suspect lived in tents in the park immediately south of the courthouse, court records show.
Numerous discussions were underway Friday about courthouse security protocols, according to Rogers, who said ballistic glass was installed in all the windows facing the park up to the courthouse’s third floor because of bullet strikes to the building. One round entered a commissioner’s chambers.
“As bad as it is outside, there was a feeling you could come inside, go to work and be safe,” he said. “That feeling you can be safe at work is gone.”
But others, including King County Public Defender Anita Khandelwal, have cautioned against swift action to close the park because it could lead to new encampments nearby.
In a joint July 2 letter to the Metropolitan King County Council, Khandelwal and executives from Evergreen Treatment Services and the Downtown Emergency Service Center said closing the park without providing better resources for its residents will only worsen their problems.
“They will find themselves displaced from the area and severed from any channels of support they have established … and, inevitably, subject to arrests and additional exposure to the criminal legal system,” the letter states.
Seattle City Councilmember Andrew Lewis, whose District 7 includes Pioneer Square and City Hall Park, said Friday the plan to use the county’s new JustCARE model to house park residents and others living outdoors in Pioneer Square in hotels or tiny house villages “is moving along.”
“JustCARE has the resources they need and the mayor’s office will release the full funding we appropriated in April,” said Lewis, referring to the $15 million the city and county have jointly committed to spending to rehouse people in the neighborhood, including residents of City Hall Park.
Outreach to the park’s residents is underway and referrals to shelter will be completed in mid-August, the mayor’s office said in a statement.
Outreach will intensify in the coming days, according to the mayor’s office, adding the city is committed to restoring the park after tents are removed.
Though charging documents indicate Jory is homeless, they don’t mention whether he is a resident of the City Hall Park encampment. Jory registered with the King County Sheriff’s Office as a Level 1 transient sex offender on Wednesday, sheriff’s spokesperson Sgt. Tim Meyer confirmed. (Sheriff’s offices in Washington designate sex offenders as Level 1, 2 or 3, with Level 3 considered most likely to reoffend.)
Transient sex offenders are required to provide the cross streets of where they are staying at their first weekly check-in with sheriff’s officials. But the self-reported information “is historically unreliable,” said Meyer, noting Jory was rearrested before his required check in.
According to the attempted rape charge, courthouse video-surveillance footage showed Jory entering the courthouse through the Fourth Avenue entrance at 10:15 a.m. Thursday. He passed a security desk manned by sheriff’s court marshals and “meandered around” the second-floor elevator lobby before walking into an alcove near the security desk, where the entrance to the women’s restroom is located.
Several minutes later, a woman was seen getting off an elevator and entering the alcove, the charges say.
Two court marshals told police they entered the restroom when they heard yelling. A large handbag was on the floor and two sets of shoes in a stall: large men’s shoes pointing toward the toilet and women’s shoes pointing the other way, say charging papers.
After the woman screamed, the marshals forced open the door and saw a naked man with his pants around his ankles and a woman with a bloody nose, trapped in the stall, according to the charges.
The man forced the door closed and the marshals again pushed it open, knocking the man down and allowing the woman to escape.
The woman told police she stood to leave the stall when the door flew open and a man immediately clamped a hand over her mouth, the charges say. She fought him and screamed for help.
Following Jory’s arrest, police say he admitted he “wanted to be with a woman” for sex and said he hid in the empty restroom until the woman came in, say the charges.
During an interview at police headquarters, Jory stood up in handcuffs and propositioned a detective, the charges say. Police say Jory told detectives he makes his own meth and smoked some about 40 minutes before the courthouse attack, adding the drug makes him want sex, according to the charges.
“Throughout the conversation, Jory made several inappropriate comments to the female detective, even asking if the male detective would step out of the room so they could be alone,” the charges say.