Lockport man pleads guilty to criminal sexual abuse

A Lockport man pleaded guilty to criminal sexual abuse but still must contend with an ongoing lawsuit from the victim in the case.

Mitchell Gurra, 60, pleaded guilty July 13 to the criminal sexual abuse of Bernie Shanks, court records state. Prosecutors dropped a charge of criminal sexual assault against Gurra as part of the plea deal.

Judge Carmen Goodman sentenced Gurra to a year and six months and ordered him to serve at least half that time. She credited him with 282 days already served in jail.

“Time is considered served and completed as of this date,” Goodman said in the July 13 order.

Gurra was admitted to Stateville Correctional Center on July 15 and paroled the same day, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Shanks said Gurra “got nothing” for his crime. Shanks said he was 41 at the time of Gurra’s offense.

“He’s a sex offender. Everyone should be warned,” Shanks said.

Shanks still is pursuing a lawsuit against Gurra and his wife, Roxanne Gurra.

“Hopefully it works out in my better favor,” Shanks said.

A revised second amended lawsuit from Shanks’ attorney, John Schrock, alleged that Gurra sexually molested his son in the early 1990s and that Roxanne Gurra “had reason to know that Mitchell was a sexual predator and likely to sexually assault any males if given the opportunity.”

Shanks’ lawsuit alleged that Mitchell Gurra committed battery against him and that his wife failed to warn Shanks of her husband’s “propensity to sexually assault males.”

Roxanne Gurra’s attorney, Joseph Vallort, filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

Vallort argued that Roxanne Gurra cannot be legally held responsible for the acts of her husband and that if she did have “some affirmative duty to protect plaintiff from the allegedly criminal acts of her husband [which she did not], such an incident was not reasonably foreseeable under the facts alleged.”

Schrock argued in response that based on past case law, “this court should impose a duty upon a wife to warn a guest of a husband with a history of sexually assaulting children.”