On November 12, Gilberto, Edgardo and Martin sat in a jury box in the Arapahoe County Courthouse in orange jumpsuits and sandals, shackled at the wrists and ankles. They were in court for their preliminary hearing on sexual-assault and kidnapping charges.
Domingo Lopez-Avaloy
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Martin's cousin, Domingo, is on the run; he fled when he was released after questioning. Police believe he may be in North Carolina. Friends say he's probably in California or Honduras. Anna is appalled that the police ever released Domingo. But Detective Martinez points out that the police are responsible for positively identifying suspects and gathering sufficient evidence to support criminal allegations, not keeping an eye on illegal immigrants. Arrest warrants for the men weren't issued until mid-August.
Gilberto's attorney refused to discuss the case or put Westwordin touch with his client. Gilberto's wife, mother-in-law and three toddler daughters attended the preliminary hearing. "There's Daddy," said a little girl holding a lollipop.
There was lots of chatter in the courtroom, and the attorneys defending the Hondurans whispered to each other over coffee, a chocolate bar and a sandwich. An Aurora police detective was the only one called to the stand. The girl and her mother were not in the room.
The defense attorneys dwelled on the girl's changing story. They brought up alcohol, and the fact that the girl said she'd smoked marijuana that day. They mentioned that the girl faced menacing charges. (Anna says her daughter pulled a knife on someone once, but she doesn't have any details, and juvenile records are kept confidential.)
None of the men from Honduras could afford the $150,000 bond, so they'd been in Arapahoe County Jail since their arrests three months earlier. The three attorneys fought to lower the bond, talking with the judge and then talking with family members, trying to determine what, if anything, they could afford to bail out their loved ones.
Only one of the attorneys was successful. Edgardo's lawyer managed to convince the judge to drop the bond to $50,000. At the end of November, Edgardo's older sister, Sixta Aquino, traveled to New York to raise the money.
Another hearing is scheduled for December 20. In the meantime, Anna says, the district attorney has been asking for her help in tracking down Cocoa, the 21-year-old who told police she went into apartment 210 and helped take the girl out. Anna wonders why she should have to find the witness. She has enough to do between working a job in the service industry, raising her toddler son and keeping up with her parole officer.
At the address listed for Cocoa on the police report, the complex manager says the woman, whose real name is Nicole Nichols, vacated the premises without notice and left no forwarding information.
At the Heatherwood Apartments, Desire has evicted the tenant from 210, where Martin and Domingo lived without permission, and also from 205, where Edgardo stayed.
The teenagers who were at Heatherwood that night, Aunty's friends, still gather at the complex next door. They laugh at Edgardo's mug shot. They laugh at his eyes swollen shut from their blows.
Soon after the assault, the girl was back at Heatherwood, hanging out with Tammy Johnson's twelve-year-old daughter. But Johnson told the girl she was no longer welcome after the girl cursed out the apartment manager, and she sent her home. "The mouth, good things don't come out," Desire says.
Johnson's daughter thinks her former friend "got what she deserved."
But long before the rape, this girl -- like all children -- deserved a chance at a normal life. "Why do kids drink and do drugs at twelve?" asks Shari Shink, founder/director of the Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center. "It's an alternative; it's an alternative to nothing. Or it covers up the pain, or the sort of lost hope, or no expectations for a decent future, or because they're looking for some way to connect with some other family, if they don't have their own."
Anna says her daughter had a great sense of humor before the assault. The girl was a poet who could improvise rhymes off the top of her head and spit them right out of her mouth. But after that night, she laughed less and took extra steps to keep her body clothed, even in front of her mother.
By mid-August, Anna returned the girl to the state's custody. She was taken to Montview Youth Detention Center, a maximum-security facility that's one of the state's largest for juveniles. "It's not just a jail for kids," says Mike Knight, a spokesman for the Arapahoe County District Attorney's Office. "When you're there, you receive treatment. They don't send you there just to punish you."
After a brief stay at the psychiatric hospital at Fort Logan, the girl is back at Montview. She no longer writes poetry, Anna says.
