Prosecutor: California Man Abducted Teen From Mexico, Forced Her To Marry Him
FULLERTON, Calif. (AP) - A prosecutor urged jurors on Thursday to look beyond the appearance of a happy marriage in the case of a man charged with abducting and raping a 15-year-old girl who stayed with him for a decade.
She remained with Isidro Garcia out of fear until she finally went to the police in 2014, Orange County Deputy District Attorney Whitney Bokosky told the panel during opening statements.
Neighbors saw Garcia, 42, as a doting father who liked to host parties at his home with the wife and daughter he adored.
Garcia was arrested in 2014 after his wife told authorities that he had abducted her a decade earlier and forced her to stay with him.
She met him shortly after arriving from Mexico to live in Santa Ana, California, with her mother, who was Garcia's girlfriend at the time. However, Bokosky alleged that Garcia began eyeing the teenager prior to helping bring her to California.
During the trial, the woman is expected to testify that Garcia sexually abused her before kidnapping her after a family dispute. Initially she was kept in a garage and told she would be sent out of the country if she called the police, prosecutors allege.
Police said the woman was moved around and given multiple fake identities to keep her hidden from family.
Garcia has pleaded not guilty to rape, kidnapping and lewd acts on a child. He could face a life sentence if convicted.
His previous lawyer said the girl left willingly with him and fabricated the allegations after reconnecting with her sister on Facebook in an attempt to win back her mother's love.
Garcia's attorney was expected to make an opening statement Thursday afternoon.
Legal experts said testimony about the couple's outwardly happy life together could influence how a jury sees the case.
Sexual contact between Garcia and his wife when she was underage would be a crime, said Lawrence Rosenthal, a law professor at Chapman University in Southern California. But jurors may have a harder time convicting him of kidnapping or rape if they believe she wanted to run away with him.
"A jury certainly could be influenced by the fact they seemed to be living consensually," he said. "A jury will be puzzled if a victim isn't acting in a way it expects a victim to act."
In family court papers, the woman wrote that she reported Garcia to authorities when she became concerned with the way he was lying next to their daughter in May 2014. A day earlier, Garcia had pulled her hair and pushed her against the wall, bruising her arm, she wrote in an application for a restraining order after Garcia was arrested.
"During the ten years I lived with him he always threatened that if I said anything to anyone I would get thrown in jail for using false identification and that immigration would deport me," the woman wrote. The Associated Press does not name victims in sexual abuse cases.
Michael Brennan, a clinical law professor at University of Southern California, questioned how much a jury would be swayed by the amount of time the woman stayed with Garcia.
"The defense is going to throw out whatever they can in terms of trying to convince a jury she really was there voluntarily," he said. "I just don't think it is going to have very much appeal."
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press.
