SPOKANE, Wash. - Prosecutors filed rape and assault charges Wednesday against three people accused of kidnapping five Japanese college students.
Authorities say the suspects had been involved in a bondage and sadomasochism ring and took part in the separate abductions on Oct. 28 and Nov. 11.
Edmund F. Ball, 40, is charged with kidnapping, rape and trying to intimidate a witness. Ball is president of a sadomasochism club in Spokane and calls himself ''Evilone,'' according to the club's Web site.
He is charged in the Nov. 11 case in which three female students at Mukogawa Fort Wright Institute were abducted as they waited for a bus. One was released but the others were taken to a house and raped, police said.
David Dailey, 38, and Lana Vickery, 42, face the same charges as Ball. They are also accused in the Oct. 28 abductions of two students at Eastern Washington University, charged with second-degree assault for allegedly causing ''such pain or agony as to be the equivalent of that produced by torture,'' court documents said.
Police said the two students were shocked with a stun gun but managed to escape.
Ball, Dailey and Vickery are being held in lieu of $1 million bail each.
Mukogawa Fort Wright is a branch of Mukogawa Women's University near Kobe, Japan. Students spend a quarter at the Spokane campus, learning the English language and U.S. culture.
