CLEARLAKE, Calif. – The case against a local businessman alleging that he had raped his developmentally disabled stepdaughter has been dropped.

Prosecutor Ed Borg's decision to dismiss the case against 82-year-old Eugene Schwartz came at the end of a preliminary hearing held Oct. 7.

Schwartz had been charged with three counts – rape of a victim unable to give consent because of medical condition, forcible rape and abuse of a dependent adult – for one act alleged to have taken place in August 2009, Borg said.

Borg told Lake County News that although the 48-year-old alleged victim did well on the stand and showed “a lot of courage,” he said there were enough issues with her testimony that he determined that it was unlikely the case could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Schwartz, a business owner and resident in Clearlake since 1965, said he was relieved the ordeal was over.

“The only thing I can tell you about the case is, none of the things – and I mean none – are true,” he said.

Schwartz was arrested April 13, about seven months after his stepdaughter – who he's cared for for 40 years and who has an IQ of about 40 – first made the allegations of rape.

Borg said the offense was alleged to have occurred on Aug. 18, 2009, with Schwartz's stepdaughter making the first report about a month later to a mandated reporter at a program she attended.

Mitchell Hauptman, Schwartz's attorney, said the accusations started a few weeks after Schwartz's wife died.

Schwartz said his stepdaughter always complained about not having friends, and he believed she made the allegation in retaliation for his refusal to let her take part in some social activities.

Last summer, she left one day to go to People Services and didn't come back that night. Schwartz said he began calling around to try to find her. The police called him back and told him they had his stepdaughter in an undisclosed location.

The first Schwartz knew there was a case was when he was arrested April 13, he said.

This wasn't the first time his stepdaughter had made allegations of abuse. Schwartz said she had done so before out of retaliation for not getting her way – once claiming he had beaten her – and that the allegations and been found to be false.

“This last one was the third time that she had told stories,” he said.

Borg said Clearlake Police had interviewed Schwartz's stepdaughter a couple of times and she gave “consistent and credible accounts of what happened, and based on the recorded interviews the case was filed.”

Hauptman said he found it curious – although not uncommon – that it took so long to file the case. During the seven months between the allegation and Schwartz's arrest, “While there was an interview or two that occurred with the victim, nothing else appears to have happened.”

He said remarkably little was disclosed along with the interviews. “We don't know how the original complaint generated based on any of the information that we have, which is unusual.”

There also were not witnesses, Hauptman said, as well as no physical evidence.

Borg said the stepdaughter's testimony was the only evidence, which is why they did a live preliminary hearing, having her go on the stand instead of having the investigating Clearlake Police officer testify about interviewed with her.

Hauptman questioned why no search warrant was served at Schwartz's home, and no physical evidence – like sheets from the stepdaughter's bed – was taken for testing. Hauptman said he tried for months to get the sheets tested to see if there was any signs of DNA.

The reason for not pursuing that testing, said Borg, was that since the woman was removed from Schwartz's home, it was reasonable to infer that he knew she had made a report and he had access to the room in which the crime is alleged to have occurred.

“So even assuming that the sheets had not been changed in a month, by the time the police became involved the value of searching the room and seizing evidence was minimal,” Borg said.

Aside from serving a search warrant, Borg said he wasn't certain what else in the case could have been done that wasn't.

Schwartz was prepared to do a lie detector test, which Hauptman said isn't a practice he favors. He also called the mechanics of an alleged rape by an 80-year-old man on a 48-year-old woman “beyond improbable.”

Borg said the live preliminary hearing was meant to help evaluate if the case could be proven at trial. Hauptman credited Borg with trying to check the veracity of the case before pushing forward.

Borg in turn said Hauptman did a very good cross-examination, which Hauptman said focused on the woman's social problems that would have given her a reason to make the accusation.

He repeatedly asked her open-ended questions about her fear of returning to her stepfather's house. Hauptman said she should have said something about being afraid of being hurt or touched, but instead she said she felt trapped in the house and deprived of making phone calls and having a social life of some kind.

Hauptman said he felt her responses highlighted issues other than sexual misconduct. “Her concern appeared to be the unhappy changes following the death of her mother.”

The hour-and-a-half-long preliminary hearing took place in the Lake County Superior Court's Clearlake division before Judge Stephen Hedstrom, who Hauptman said also had concerns about the prosecution's ability to go forward.

Borg said that, in the end, the appropriate thing to do was dismiss the case. The woman's “substantial disability” really limited the scope of what was possible in the case, he added.

He said he spoke with the stepdaughter before dismissing the case and she agreed to the course of action.

Hauptman said the stepdaughter is both a vulnerable and appealing person who “simply incites a desire to help her,” which likely aided the case in its initial stages.

Schwartz, who maintains he has been an advocate for the developmentally disabled for decades – including serving with local nonprofits dedicated to that cause – said a protective order had been placed against him to keep him away from his stepdaughter. That order was dropped at the end of the preliminary hearing.

She won't be returning to live with him, he said.

“I think she is better in another home with more people that are in her level,” he said.

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