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UTAH STATE PRISON — A man currently serving up to life in the Utah State Prison for the brutal rape and assault of a young girl more than 15 years ago now faces a new charge involving the assault of a fellow inmate.
Javier Wilford Sickler, 45, of Magna, is charged in Sanpete County’s 5th District Court with forcible sodomy, a first-degree felony.
Sickler is accused of sexually assaulting a 29-year-old inmate while incarcerated at the state prison’s Gunnison facility in 2006.
According to the Utah Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, the case was investigated at that time and a sexual assault kit was completed and sent to the state crime lab. But the kit wasn’t tested until 2018. In late 2018, the DNA profile tested was put into a national database and matched with Sickler, according to the group.
It is the first prison-related case filed in Utah due to kit testing outside of Salt Lake County, according to the initiative.
Sickler was originally sentenced to prison in 2002 for his convictions on a pair of rapes. In one case, Sickler took an 11-year-old girl out of her Midvale house, sexually assaulted her, and then brutally beat her with a hammer. The girl was critically injured but survived.
A neighbor heard what sounded like a girl yelling and called police. Officers checking the area saw Sickler crouched over the girl and gave chase, eventually arresting him with the help of a police K-9.
After his arrest, investigators learned that he also assaulted and raped a woman two weeks earlier in an assault that lasted nearly two hours, according to police.
Sickler was sentenced to several consecutive sentences of five years to life in prison for his convictions on those cases.
He is scheduled to make a court appearance on his new charge on Wednesday.
