Auburn man faces child rape charges

Michael L. Phillips already had been looking at 10 years in federal prison for possessing and distributing child pornography,

Michael L. Phillips already had been looking at 10 years in federal prison for possessing and distributing child pornography,

But last Friday, the King County Prosecutor’s Office charged the 44-year-old Auburn man with first-degree child rape after investigators tied his DNA to semen and saliva found on a 7-year-old girl’s clothing and body following a sexual assault Aug. 23 in the men’s room of the Auburn Goodwill store,

Last March a federal judge had ordered Phillips to submit a DNA sample as a condition of his release, and authorities entered it into a federal database as part of his federal plea agreement.

Phillips will be arraigned at 9 a.m. Monday in courtroom GA of the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent. He is being held on $1 million bail.

According to court documents, the girl, her father and her younger sister went to the Goodwill store in Auburn on Aug. 23 to look for clothing. Her father let her stay in the toy section, while he and her sister wandered to another area of the store.

The girl later told police, according to court documents, that she had been in the toy section looking for clothes for her Barbie dolls when a man grabbed her hand tightly, said, “You shouldn’t be alone here,” took her into the men’s room and kept her there. The man then forced sex acts on her, according to court records.

The girl later described her assailant as a younger white man wearing white Nike tennis shoes, blue jeans and a short-sleeved, white-and-blue-striped shirt. She recalled that the man had a necklace-like cord with an attached badge hanging around his neck. At one point during the assault, the badge flipped over, and the girl saw the word “Goodwill” and a picture on it, court records say.

Store employees gave voluntary DNA swabs and investigators excluded all of them as possible suspects, court records say. But the unknown assailant’s DNA profile was entered into a national database.

In January, Phillips was indicted in federal court for possessing and distributing photographs and videos of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, court records show. The FBI arrested him in February and charged as a result of an investigation that began in 2008 into people using a file-sharing program to trade child pornography, documents say.

At the time, Phillips was living in Bothell. Agents searched his house in May 2009 after undercover agent downloaded images from Phillips’ online account and discovered more than 300,000 pornographic images and videos of children.

Phillips pleaded guilty in March and was released on bond pending his sentencing in federal court. His sentencing is scheduled for June 20.