Probation department recommends 127-years-to-life for man in Rohnert Park sex assault

<p>The Sonoma County Probation Department is recommending a 127-years-to-life prison sentence for a three-strikes sex offender convicted in August in the 2008 sexual assault of an 81-year-old Rohnert Park woman, his attorney said Wednesday.</p><p>But it will be at least three more weeks before Paul Vernon Sullenger, 46, is sentenced.</p><p>Sullenger's attorney, Kevin McConnell, requested the postponement so he could further analyze the prison term recommended by probation officials in his client's pre-sentencing report.</p><p>“The sentencing issues are fairly complex,” McConnell said.</p><p>Sullenger is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 2 on six felonies, including sexual battery, assault with intent to commit rape, forced oral copulation, burglary and making terrorist threats.</p><p>Deputy District Attorney Tania Partida told Judge Robert LaForge on Wednesday that the elderly victim “is not OK with it, but she understands.”</p><p>The woman, now 84, whose name has not been made public, already has testified twice, describing how she heard a bump one night and found a strange man in her apartment who threw her on the bed, covered her face with a pillow and sexually assaulted her.</p><p>He returned 7 1/2 months later, cutting a hole in her bedroom window screen. Her window was held shut this time by a wooden dowel and her barking dogs apparently frightened him away, she said.</p><p>Two months after that, the Rohnert Park Public Safety Department learned that a DNA sample they had submitted to the state Department of Justice came up with a match in the federal DNA database and led to Sullenger's arrest.</p><p>Sullenger's fingerprints also matched those found on a patio chair after the attempted break-in at the woman's home.</p><p>He previously was convicted of sexual assault in Houston, Tex. in 1994.</p>