Former Tigard legislative candidate pleads guilty to incest charge
Tony Marino also served on the Tigard Chamber of Commerce
Tony J. Marino
Courtesy of the Pierce County Sheriff's Office
A Tigard businessman who ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Oregon Legislature in 2008, pleaded guilty last month to having sex with his adult daughter in 2008.
Tony J. Marino, 48, who has worked in broadcasting, marketing and Web development, and is a former board member of the Tigard Chamber of Commerce, will be sentenced Sept. 25 in Pierce County, Wash. He was initially charged with raping his estranged daughter, but the superior court in Pierce County changed the charges to second-degree incest — a class C felony — in exchange for a guilty plea.
Marino is currently lodged in the Pierce County Jail.
Marino, who created and ran America Web Works from Tigard, pleaded guilty to sexual contact with his daughter while they were staying at the Emerald Queen Casino and Hotel in Fife, Wash. on Aug. 16, 2008. The daughter reported this incident to Tigard police on Feb. 17, 2009, telling them her father had nonconsensual sexual intercourse with her while she said she was intoxicated.
Multiple telephone numbers associated with Marino called Wednesday were disconnected and the Web site for America Web Works is no longer active.
Marino, a Republican, lost to incumbent state Rep. Larry Galizio with 36 percent of the vote for Oregon House District 35 last November.
According to court documents:
The daughter, who until the beginning of 2008 had never met her father, said she moved from Hawaii to Tigard that year to get to know him. She eventually moved in with Marino and the daughter told officers they had a good relationship at first and went out to drink “a lot.” She reported that her family warned her to “be careful,” and soon Marino became abusive and controlling.
The father and daughter traveled to Seattle during a charity benefit motorcycle ride on Aug. 15, 2008, and on the way back stopped to drink and gamble in Fife, Wash. The daughter said Marino kept buying her shots of alcohol.
She told police that the next thing she remembers is waking up naked next to her father, realizing that he had “complete intercourse” with her that night.
Second-degree incest, which Marino eventually pleaded guilty to, means there was sexual contact, but not intercourse. First-degree incest, one of the initial charges against Marino, means there was also intercourse.
Once Marino and his daughter returned to Tigard, the daughter moved in with a friend and had minimal contact with Marino, she reported. Then, she said, Marino began calling and threatening her, saying that he would tell people about her past drug use and no one would believe her about what had happened.
She told investigators that at one point Marino told her, “I really love you; you have a beautiful body,” and “The sex with you is the best I ever had… it felt so good.”
Detectives from the Puyallup Tribal Police and Tigard say they received court approval to record phone conversations between the daughter and Marino earlier this year. When she confronted her father about that night on the recording, police say he never denied having sex with her, but said that it was “an opinion” that she was “basically passed out” during sex.
When Marino was running for the District 35 seat, he publicly released a letter in April 2008 laying out “mistakes” he had made in the past. He detailed a previous bankruptcy, divorces and an Internal Revenue Service tax lien.