A former Seattle firefighter was sentenced to 3 years and 10 months in prison Wednesday, June 8, for the repeated rapes of a Lynden teenager.
Michael James “Suey” Sulak, 54, met the girl through a theater group. He convinced her they were in love, and she ran away from her home to be with him in late December 2013.
Over four days, as her family frantically searched for her, Sulak raped the girl: in a trailer outside his Ferndale home and in a pickup in a parking lot near his Queen Anne firehouse, according to charging papers.
He was eventually arrested, and a plea deal suggested Sulak serve a year in jail on a special sex offender sentencing alternative and, upon his release, he’d continue to be monitored and get treatment for sexual deviancy.
At the time the girl and her family supported the deal. That changed, however, and police reports emerged alleging another teenager had been sexually abused by Sulak, when he was a youth pastor in the ’90s.