For sex crimes involving a fugitive adolescent girl, a 54-year-old man from Albany received a sentence of decades in jail.
The girl had a lengthy and recurring history of escaping from home, according to court documents, and she was living on the streets while abusing drugs and alcohol.
In August 2023, Ronald Allen McLaughlin was taken into custody by Albany police. Seven felony counts of first-degree rape, one case of first-degree sodomy, and one count of misdemeanor fourth-degree assault were indicted against him in Linn County court.
In December, a jury convicted McLaughlin on five counts of rape and the sodomy charge. The remaining accusations against him were dropped. On January 17, Judge Thomas McHill ordered McLaughlin to register as a sex offender and sentenced him to over 33 years in prison.
Prosecutor Alex Olenick stated in a court filing that McLaughlin preyed on a young, disturbed, drug-addicted youngster, whom he exploited and mistreated over a number of months.
According to an affidavit, in October 2022, Albany police Detective Gabe Flores was tasked with looking into a potential continuing relationship between the victim, who was 16 at the time, and McLaughlin, who was 52 at the time.
The teenager refused to speak to child advocates or law enforcement during the initial investigation. However, Flores detailed numerous incidents of physical abuse and sexual contact in the vicinity of Linn, Marion, and Lincoln counties in an interview conducted in April 2023.
According to a court filing, she would later report doing drugs continuously and being impaired almost constantly throughout this time.
According to the affidavit, the girl was given a blue M30 pill, which was allegedly a fake oxycodone tablet produced with fentanyl, in a trap house in the 2500 block of Hill Street Southeast after meeting McLaughlin at Monteith Riverpark in the summer of 2022.
Unknown and potentially lethal amounts of fentanyl are present in counterfeits.
The girl claimed to have nodded out, or been in and out of consciousness, after taking the drug. She was informed that she had overdosed and required Narcan, but she eventually came to the conclusion that she had not overdosed and that McLaughlin had merely said so to make her look like a huge hero.
According to the affidavit, the girl ended up cuddling up to McLaughlin in the trap house bathroom while she kept nodding off. She claimed that McLaughlin kissed her and they had oral sex and intercourse when she woke up.
According to reports, the two had multiple sexual encounters during their four days in the trap house. They apparently lived together for almost four months after they fled, primarily in McLaughlin’s car and frequently consuming meth and fentanyl.
According to the affidavit, McLaughlin exposed the child to illegal narcotics, sexual assaults, physical abuse, including an event that sent her to the Salem emergency room, and criminal activity during that period.
According to a court filing, she would later inform investigators that she frequently did not want to have sex with McLaughlin and that at least once, he physically attacked her after she rejected his advances.
Both of them were eventually taken into custody in October 2022 following a string of reported incidents in which they escaped law enforcement.
They were allegedly met by an Albany police officer in a church parking lot on October 20, 2022, who found out the girl was a fugitive, arrested her, and sent her home. Soon after, she fled home once more and joined McLaughlin.
A court record states that McLaughlin, who was reportedly not detained at the time, informed the officer he was assisting with the girl’s emancipation.
Five days later, McLaughlin and the girl led police on a fast-paced pursuit down Highway 99, which resulted in McLaughlin’s wreck and his subsequent arrest for several offenses. After being placed in the Oregon Youth Authority’s custody, the girl remained at the Oak Creek facility until the middle of 2024.
When Flores interrogated McLaughlin in August 2023, he denied ever having intercourse with the girl but generally confirmed her claims that they had been together for a while and had slept in a car together around places in Linn, Marion, and Lincoln counties.
However, McLaughlin went into great detail about his first encounter with the girl, stating that she was disoriented and needed continual care to stay awake, while smoking a blue M30 tablet at the trap house. He claimed to have led her to the restroom a few times without accompanying her inside.
In addition, he denied knowing how the girl got the pill, claimed not to have seen her smoke it, and stated that he believed 911 should have been contacted because of her altered mental condition, but that never occurred.
According to the affidavit, McLaughlin informed Flores that he had initially believed the girl to be 18 or 19 years old but had discovered at the trap house that she was only 16. Though he claimed it was simply as a father figure, he acknowledged staying with her.
Convictions for harassment, assault, contempt of court, possession of a forged instrument, reckless endangerment, evading police, failure to appear, driving while suspended, unauthorized vehicle use, possession of controlled substances, burglary, felon possessing a restricted weapon, robbery, and providing false information to law enforcement date back to 1995, according to court records.
McLaughlin was found guilty of first-degree burglary in February 2020 and given a sentence of over four years in jail for a burglary in which a resident was shot in the neck. The gunshot wound had long-term effects on the victim, including the potential for irreversible speech loss.
McLaughlin is being imprisoned at Wilsonville’s Coffee Creek Correctional Facility.
Albany Democrat-Herald, Oregon, 2025. Go to the democratherald.com website. Tribune Content Agency, LLC is the distributor.