Convicted North Aurora rapist gets 24 years

A convicted rapist was sentenced to 24 years in prison Friday after admitting to getting his teenage daughter's friends drunk and sexually abusing them in his North Aurora home.

Todd Clodfelter, 47, will serve about 19 years according to sentencing guidelines. He's been at the Kane County jail since his September 2006 arrest.

Kane County prosecutor Justin Fitzsimmons said the sentence was appropriate, and the victims did not have to relive their abuse on the witness stand at a trial slated to begin next week before Judge Grant Wegner.

"His crimes in this case were despicable. He used his daughter's friends as a conduit to the victims," Fitzsimmons said. "This was a plan that was carried out. It was the defendant's scheme."

Fitzsimmons said Clodfelter would invite his daughter's friends, who were 15 and lived in West Chicago at the time, for sleepovers and parties at his home on John Street. He would provide the girls with alcohol to get them drunk. He later fondled one girl at a sleepover and assaulted another during a St. Patrick's Day party in 2006.

Clodfelter -- who served four years in prison after he was convicted of repeatedly raping a co-worker in a St. Charles parking lot in 1983 -- faced up to 60 years in prison this time around.

In exchange for his guilty plea to criminal sexual assault and aggravated criminal sexual abuse, prosecutors dropped more than 30 other charges.

Upon his release from prison, Clodfelter must register as a predatory child sex offender. As part of the sentencing, Wegner and Public Defender Dave Kliment recommended Clodfelter be sent to a prison that provides sex offender treatment.

"We can give him every opportunity (for treatment), but ultimately that's a decision Mr. Clodfelter makes," Fitzsimmons said.