Facing a maximum penalty of more than 25 years in jail for date rape, sexual assaults on three women, former Center Middle School teacher and athletic coach, 54-year-old Jay Dana, escaped with a 75-day sentence last week in the Mahoning County Common Pleas Court of Judge Maureen Sweeney.
      One of two of Dana’s victims who addressed the court during his sentencing hearing told Judge Sweeney if she had known that Dana would ‘only get 75 days,’ she doubted she would have come forward.
      More than 3000 days ago, at the age of 42, Christine Smith told police she went on a date with Dana on Sept. 10, 2006.
      “I was given a drink by him, which at some point, caused me to black out,” Smith said last Wednesday at Dana’s sentencing hearing.
      She said she awakened at some pint to Dana telling her to “get up, get up, we have to get you home.”
      “I was aware at this point of Mr. Dana running around yelling ‘what have I done, what have I done,’” the woman told the court.
      She said she passed out and awakened several times, adding she felt relief when laying on her side, he began to throw up.
      She said that she passed out again, only to be awakened by the smell and sound of Dana cleaning the carpet of her vomit, “spraying cleaner and using a scrub brush.”
      Smith said that Dana then suggested that she go and take a shower, but she said she was unable to do so, “because I couldn’t even stand up.”
      At this point, the woman said she recalled that Dana took her by the arm to the bathroom, where she fell to the floor and passed out again.
      “My next recollection is of him standing over me...holding my pants above me, telling me ‘to put these on, put these on.’ And, I am laying there thinking, ‘why are they off?’”
      Smith told the court that Dana kept telling her that he had to take her home.
      “I was still unable to open my eyes, or walk. I started crawling like a dog towards his voice to get out of the house,” Smith recalled.
      She said once in Dana’s car, she still could not open her eyes.
      “On the drive home, he kept telling me to button my shirt...I didn’t have the coordination to do that,” Smith said.
      As she told Boardman police on Sept. 13, 2006, Smith told the court once she arrived at her home, Dana ‘plops me on a chair on my back porch...and runs to his car and leaves.”
      She said “once the effect began to wear off, I checked on my son, who was sleeping, and went to bed.”
      She said when she awoke, “I realized I had no underwear on, and my tampon was missing.”
      She said that she called Dana and asked the man if they had been intimate, and he said they had.
      “When I stated that I didn’t remember, he laughed and said he had to get ready for school and needed to hang up.”
      She recalled about ten minutes later, Dana called her back and said he wasn’t ready for a relationship and wished her good luck.
      “I spent the remainder of that day violently ill, unable to go to work,” Smith said.
      She said a doctor told her it would be too late for a blood test, and an OB/GYN then prescribed her medication “twelve times stronger that normal medicine.
      “I missed several more days of work because of the effects of the medication,” Smith told the court.
      Additionally, when word got out that she had been raped, her 13-year-old son became traumatized and was hauled into a school office and told he could not come back to school until he was evaluated.
      As she spoke at the sentencing hearing, Smith told the court “My thoughts go back to he could have killed me that night...To this day I can’t stop thinking that I could have been killed.”
      She told the court in Jan., 2011 she learned that Dana’s wife, Michelle had died, “asphyxiated in her own vomit after playing a drinking game with Jay.
      “My first thought was that could have been me.”
      Smith said she learned in 2013 her case had been reopened and she began to live in fear, “thinking Mr. Dana would want revenge.”
      She said Dana’s three victims were informed of the plea bargain deal on June 12 and would get 75 days in jail and be a registered sex offender for the rest of his life.
      “We were asked if this was enough of a sentence, and we stated ‘absolutely not.”
      “Three women and a jail sentence of next to nothing...I endured far more than 75 days of trauma,” Smith said, adding “Being classified as a sex offender for the rest of his life brings no satisfaction that he is not going to do this again.”
      She said that Dana “demonstrated a total disrespect for the law. He is a criminal and should be recognized as such,” Smith told the court, adding “I put shame, embarrassment and humility aside...to make sure this would not happen to anyone.”
      A second victim, Marie Brickley, also addressed the court.
      She said that Dana gave her one glass of wine.
      “I woke up the next morning alone, naked and vomiting violently...I couldn’t function for the next three days.”
      She said she spent months “with my doors locked, always looking over my shoulder in complete fear.
      “This took the life out of me...I felt violated...I feel for his deceased wife, who doesn’t have a voice.
      “It changed the way I live my life everyday.
      “Your honor, I hope your sentence will recognize the pain and suffering he has caused.”
      Dana’s chief counsel, J. Gerald Ingram who was in court with is stablemate, Atty. Desirae DiPiero, noted Dana served three years in the U.S. Air Force, held a masters degree and served for some 30 years as a teacher.
      Dana abruptly left his teaching job in May, 2011, before the school year ended, following a meeting with Police Chief Jack Nichols and Supt. Frank Lazzeri.
      That meeting was held after local police received a report that Dana had shown-up, unannounced, at the residence of one of his victims, Ms. Smith.
      Ingram reminded the court the plea agreement was a joint recommendation, approved by defense counsel and the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office.
      “A joint recommendation for a plea bargain sentence was reached after careful consideration of the facts, and the risks to both the prosecution and the defense,” Ingram said.
      In addition to the paltry jail time, and sex offender status, Judge Sweeney ordered Dana to pay a $5000 fine on two counts of sexual battery and one count of attempted sexual battery.
      “I am sorry...I never meant to harm anyone, as God as my witness,” Dana said in his only remarks to the court, before he was led away in handcuffs to begin serving his jail time.
     
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      Jay Dana’s wife, Michelle, died on Christmas Day, 2010. Her lifeless body was discovered in the Columbiana home she shared with her husband. Jay Dana told authorities he and his wife had been playing a drinking game the evening prior to her death, after the couple had returned home from a Christmas Eve party with Michelle’s family in Monroeville, Pa. The death scene was contaminated from the outset, as there are reports a neighbor cleaned-up a mess of vomit and a bathroom as police arrived to
      answer the call. Following the sentencing
      hearing last week, several of Michelle’s friends who were at the court said they were told prior to calling the police, Dana said he went out jogging only to return and find his wife was dead. The death of Dana’s wife remains under investigation by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification.
     
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      Pictured: FORMER CENTER MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHER and coach, Jay Dana, center, is flanked by his defense team of Atty. Desirae DiPiero and left, and her stablemate, chief counsel J. Gerald Ingram, as Dana appeared for sentencing last week in the Mahoning County Common Pleas Courtroom of Judge Maureen Sweeney.