The following is among three cases–two in Garden Grove and one involving a Los Angeles Police Department officer busted for allegedly flashing in Huntington Beach–that sparked a debate over whether to post booking photos (or any photos, actually) of the defendants. Such photos are available of Blaise Ryan Christie, and after we give you the details of the porn producer's arrest for allegedly luring women via Craigslist and forcibly sodomizing them, we'll explain why, at least for now, we are not running an image of him.
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It has to do with this: the Orange County District Attorney's office (OCDA) and the Garden Grove Police Department are seeking possible other victims of 32-year-old Christie. So, then, shouldn't we see what he looks in case someone recognizes him? We'll get to why the answer is no later in this post.
Between September and October of this year, Christie posted Craigslist ads seeking companionship and offering thousands of dollars a week to those who took the Garden Grove resident up on it, according to the OCDA.
On two separate occasions, he met 20- and 24-year-old women where consensual sex turned into forcible sodomy, the OCDA alleges.
He is charged with two felony counts of sodomy by force with sentencing enhancement allegations for committing the specified offense against more than one victim that, with a conviction, could send him to state prison for 30 years to life. Christie was being held on $1 million bail with his arraignment scheduled for Dec. 3 in Westminster.
Anyone with additional information or who believes they have been a victim is asked to contact Garden Grove Police Detective Steve Heine at 714.741.5422 or Supervising District Attorney Investigator Kelly Core at 714.347.8794.
If you go to this page of adult performer Eden Alexander, you'll discover Christie has faced similar allegations (and arrest) before–in 2011.
She claims she was flown in from San Francisco and “was one of MANY, dozens even, who were ripped off, choked, punched and sexually assaulted by this predator and his accomplice.”
“What Christie did was not only sexual assault, but a hate crime,” she writes. “He used the XXX content he stole from me [and] the other girls and uploaded it to his own personal Nazi porn sites. As if ripping off, exploiting, humiliating, punching, choking, then leaving these girls stranded wasn't enough, he then turned it around and uploaded them to sites he created and updated himself whose sole purpose was to show women of color fucked, choked, humiliated and beaten.”
But if you believe you were also a victim of him, and plan to come forward to press charges, you are asked not to look at photos of Christie on Alexander's site or places like the Orange County Register that have posted his booking photo.
Garden Grove Police Lt. Ben Stauffer apologizes for not releasing a Christie booking photo, explaining that due to the ongoing search for additional victims, release of a booking photo would taint any future victim's ability to view a photo lineup to independently identify the suspect.
“I know that the media has probably located photos of these individuals by now and would ask that you not publish those photos until a reasonable time has passed for additional victims to come forward in these matters,” Stauffer adds. “Victims in these types of cases are often embarrassed or otherwise afraid to come forward, so I would ask you to give us some time to allow potential victims to possibly work through those feelings and pick up the phone to call us before you show them all a photo of the suspect in the case and taint their testimony/identification.”
So we're holding off … for now.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.