Woman Says She Was Forcibly Raped By State’s Attorney Richard Fritz, 2 Others

The following is an interview with Carla Henning Bailey which was first published June 29, 1999 in ST. MARY’S TODAY.

Bailey told ST. MARY’S TODAY that she wanted to go “one-on-one” with Richard Fritz to answer his public statements that what occurred in November of 1964 at a house on St. George’s Island with her, Fritz and two other young men was a case of consensual sex, while she contends she was forcibly raped.

Bailey first disclosed her story in April, charging that she had been raped, saying that she wanted to be identified as the victim, pointing out that she had done nothing wrong or had done anything to be ashamed of. Bailey says that she wants to be able to tell what really happened as she is furious that Fritz is painting her to be tramp.

Bailey listened to a tape of a radio broadcast interview of Fritz which took place the day after last fall’s local election in which Fritz won the contest for St. Mary’s State’s Attorney. She also read a Washington Post article about the incident.

Fritz was asked on the broadcast about the ST. MARY’S TODAY election day news article which disclosed that Fritz had pleaded guilty and been convicted of a sexual assault on a 15-year-old girl and been sentenced to 18 months in prison, which was then reduced to supervised probation. Two other young men were also sentenced by the court who were involved in the sexual assault at the same time.

Fritz’s supporters, most of whom were St. Mary’s Sheriff’s deputies, went out on election eve and in the early morning hours before the polls opened on Election Day and swept the newsstands clear of all available copies of the newspaper.

A WMDM interviewer (Chris Brugman) asked Fritz a series of questions in a live interview. Questions were posed to Bailey last week after she heard Fritz for the first time, in the radio interview.

Bailey was then asked questions about Fritz’s statements on the broadcast and the article in the Post.

RICHARD FRITZ: “When a person goes out and blatantly lies it really bothers me.”

 ST. MARY’S TODAY: Fritz has called the ST. MARY’S TODAY reporting of him and two others raping you, as you have stated, a lie, calling it in a radio interview, “a blatant lie”. How do you feel about his statement?

CARLA BAILEY: “No, that is not so, it is not a lie,” said Bailey.

RICHARD FRITZ: “Obviously hormones were running full blast, I had a relationship with a girl that was one month from legal age.”

CARLA BAILEY: “We never had any relationship, it was rape, until then I only knew him from around the school and the neighborhood and I went to his house with my friend Liz who dated him and twice I went over to his house with her, but we never had anything of a relationship, we lived in the same area, not far from each other in the small houses at Piney Point across from the Seafarer’s School.

He was a good-looking guy but Liz liked him, she had his ring for two weeks. It wasn’t any relationship between us, it was a rape, and it wasn’t just Fritz, it was two others, they also did it. I begged and pleaded with them to stop, finally, it was over.

When I called my mother and told her you were interviewing me, my mother said that if my father were alive, he would be right down there in that county and buying that paper, he would be glad to see that something was finally going to happen to them.”

Fritz was asked on the radio show to characterize what really took place.

FRITZ: “The nature of the charge was one count of carnal knowledge, where a person of 18 had sex with a person under the age of 16, it is not a dark diabolical crime, it is a crime against age. Maryland is one of the only states where mistake of age is not a defense, if the act occurred, period, it is a violation of the law, one cannot come in and say my Lord, the girl told me she was 18 and I believed it.”

FRITZ in radio interview: “I was 18, I did what came natural when I was 18, I was probably myself a virgin or close to being a virgin at the time, Rossignol says this was a gang situation, it wasn’t, but I’ll tell you this, there were several other persons out there who got themselves in trouble with the same thing, they were doing what comes natural to them too.

It would lead the public into the impression that it was a forceful act, which was complete baloney.

If that same act was to occur today between a young man who is 18 and 15, it is not a violation of the law anymore.”

CARLA: “It was forcible, it was a gang rape. He tried to make it sound like it was three separate times, not the same time.

I feel better that it is out, I feel that people should know, I know who is telling the truth, if he would have said the words that he was sorry in the first place and if he had told the truth it would never have come out, he is still lying about it, now in the Washington Post article, now he is getting other people involved, in referring to my parents. I don’t think it was my parents that called the police and got them involved, it was either the school or the hospital, because I hadn’t told my parents, Mr. Duke called my parents up the next day at school and my mother took me to the Naval Air Station hospital.

If he would have said it in the first place now, at the election, like he did when he was 18 years old and he plead guilty at the time, why can’t he just speak the truth now.”

RICHARD FRITZ in radio interview: “There was obviously a conspiracy between Mr. Rossignol and my opponent to come out, to do this, to blast it, to mislead the public, to totally mislead the public and to make me look like, uh, my God, I was Jack the Ripper or something, solely for the purposes of deceiving the public.”

ST. MARY’S TODAY: What would Jack the Ripper do differently to you than what you say they did?

CARLA BAILEY: “Kill me. I am 5’ 1” and about 105 pounds and give or take a couple of pounds I am the same size as at that age of 15.

One of them was in his 20’s, Fritz was 18 and the other was 17, that one was a big kid who played football and Fritz is big next to me, about 5’10 and I remember the older one as being fat.

Fritz didn’t think this was ever going to come back on him or that I was going to come out and tell the truth, he thought he was going to get away with it, the girl and her brother who were there weren’t going to talk about it, with me being out of town, he felt like it wasn’t going to come out.

I don’t know Jack the Ripper, I knew these people and I didn’t expect to be raped by them.”

“I ended up contacting the newspaper and told my story and nothing has been heard of him since.

“Neither ST. MARY’S TODAY or the Washington Post changed any words in my story, both got my story right.”

 ST. MARY’S TODAY: “Do you think Richard Fritz should be State’s Attorney?”

CARLA BAILEY: “I really don’t think he should have the position, I didn’t think he should have the position when he became an attorney. He is not telling people the truth when he says on the tape that it was three different times, that’s what the tape sounds like to me, he continues to paint me as a tramp. It wasn’t consent, I screamed, I was trying to get away and I couldn’t because one was holding my ankles and one was holding my arms.”

ST. MARY’S TODAY: “This hasn’t healed with time, do you know why?”

CARLA BAILEY: “I don’t know why it isn’t, it was one big scar to me, it’s like when you fall down and get a scrape on your knee and it heels and you get a scar and it reminds of the pain over again, it opened the wound when I heard he was calling this consensual sex.”

A few words about news from the owner of WMDM in 1999.