STEPDAD RAPE

Narda Goff, 43, went on trial, accused of helping her husband, John Goff, impregnate her daughter with a syringe when she was 16.  The now 19 year old woman, whose identity was withheld, said she agreed to the arrangement only after her stepfather threatened to kill her mother.  She said she never told her mother about the threat he made at gunpoint, but that her mother helped her chart her menstrual cycle to determine when she was most fertile.  The mother faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of conspiracy to commit sexual battery and child endangering.  Two charges each of complicity to sexual battery and rape were dropped by prosecutors earlier this week.  Mrs. Goff, who has multiple sclerosis, felt she was too old and sick to bear a child and that their daughter willingly allowed the injections to fulfill Mrs. Goff's wish to give her new husband a child.  John Goff is accused of breaking the very law he and his wife successfully campaigned to tighten.  The Goffs had lobbied lawmakers to toughen rape laws after her daughter, then only 9, said she was molested in 1993.  They persuaded lawmakers to change the law in 1996 to include penetration with any object as a component of rape.  Mr. Goff's trial is scheduled to begin March 18 and according to paternity tests, he is the father of his stepdaughter's baby.  The baby boy, born in September 1999, is currently in foster care.

John Goff was sentenced to 20 years in prison yesterday. He was found guilty August 29 of rape and other charges.  (Akron, Ohio)