Woman Claims Rapist Found Her Through Car Dealership

After a decade of living in fear, Karen Sommers is stepping out of the shadows, telling the story of the night she was attacked inside her Newport Beach home.

In a new lawsuit, she claims the man obtained her address and personal information from the car dealership where he worked -- a place she says she continued to unwittingly return to time and again in the years after her brutal attack.

In May 2005, Sommers was confronted by an intruder inside her house.

“He wore a mask, I thought he was there to rob me,” she said. He called her by her first name. Crime scene photos show the intruder duct-taped her hands and mouth.

“(He) said that if I called the police, he knew where I lived and he’d come back and to kill me,” she said.

He forced her into the bedroom and sexually assaulted her.

“I honestly thought that night, I was going to die,” she said.

In the years that followed, the then-40-year-old nurse practitioner said she lived in fear that something would happen to her again. She said she routinely put glasses in front of her doors so that if her attacker returned, she would hear him and be ready to defend herself.

She slept with knives in her bed to protect herself.

“I lived in complete fear because I did not know who this man was,” she said.

Then came a break in the case.

In June 2014, a judge sentenced Travis Dewayne Batten Jr. to 107 years to life in prison for sexually assaulting Sommers and another woman.

Sommers never met Batten, but believes there’s only one way he would have known her. Batten was a mechanic at Fletcher Jones Motorcars in Newport Beach. That is where Sommers bought her Mercedes and frequently had it serviced.

“You feel that you’re safe when you go into an establishment to buy a car,” she said.

Sommers is now suing Batten’s former employer.

“You didn’t keep me safe. You allowed one of your employees to gain access into my records. Where I lived, my phone number. You allowed him to be able to come into my house and attack me,” she said.

Christopher Rudd is the attorney representing Sommers in her civil lawsuit against Fletcher Jones, and he said private information is too readily available.

“There’s no way Mr. Batten should have access, even theoretically, to her personal information,” he said.

Attorneys for Fletcher Jones denied all wrongdoing. They declined to comment on specific claims for this story, citing the pending litigation.

Court documents reviewed by NBC4 reveal that prior to being hired, Fletcher Jones ran a background check on Batten and he had “no criminal history.”

Fletcher Jones acknowledged servicing Karen Sommers’ car “on approximately six occasions” but “did not assign Mr. Batten to perform any of those services.”

The documents also show Batten “did not have authorization… to review the dealership’s record for plaintiff’s address.”

But Sommers isn’t convinced.

“Why didn’t they protect me?” she asked.

She said she had no idea her attacker closer than she ever thought.

“I sold the house, but kept the car. I kept going back to Fletcher Jones to have my car fixed, not knowing the guy was there.”

“Why me?” she asked. “It’s destroyed my life.”