A 30-year-old former state worker on Tuesday was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for sexually assaulting a Salem woman with developmental disabilities outside a rural Marion County cemetery.
Zakary E. Glover of Lebanon earlier this year pleaded guilty in Portland U.S. District Court to a federal charge that he deprived the victim of her constitutional right to bodily integrity under color of law involving attempted aggravated sexual abuse.
Federal prosecutors said in their sentencing recommendation that Glover was “a man who knew right from wrong, a man who knew firsthand how destructive sexual abuse could be, but who nonetheless targeted the most vulnerable of victims in a place where he had absolute control. This abuse was an act of pure selfishness.”
The assault in November 2021 was recorded by a trail camera.
According to court records, Glover at the time was employed as support specialist for the state Department of Human Services. He was assigned to the agency’s Office of Developmental Disabilities Stabilization and Crisis Unit, which operates residential programs in Oregon that serve individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Glover helped with residents at a Salem home, including caring for a woman who has “severe autism and epilepsy and is cognitively delayed and barely able to communicate verbally. Instead, staff members communicate via picture books, YouTube videos, or by drawing pictures for her,” according to federal court records.
She was taken on daily outings to a fast-food restaurant, described by prosecutors as “an important part of her daily routine and a way for her to interact with the world around her.”
Glover drove her to the restaurant but didn’t immediately return her to the Salem home.
Instead, prosecutors wrote, “he took her to the Aumsville Cemetery – a place he had no business going and a place he did not expect to encounter anyone else. The fact that the defendant had to drive over ten miles to get to the cemetery, including traversing a partially dirt road to a dead-end, suggests that he knew where he was going and what he was going to do when he got there, well in advance.”
There, he assaulted the woman.
“A recently installed trail camera at the cemetery recorded his abuse in clear, chilling detail,” prosecutors wrote.
Prosecutors didn’t reveal how the assault was detected.
Glover, a military veteran, worked for the state from Feb. 5, 2018, to Jan. 20, 2022, according to state officials.
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Les Zaitz is editor and CEO of Salem Reporter. He co-founded the news organization in 2018. He has been a journalist in Oregon for nearly 50 years in both daily and community newspapers and digital news services. He is nationally recognized for his commitment to local journalism. He also is editor and publisher of the Malheur Enterprise in Vale, Oregon.
