Teen warned defendant about young girls
Pair planned how to combat accusations
By Bobbi Mlynar
Friday, August 24, 2007
A teenaged boy and his mother both testified about their concerns over a man’s relationships with young girls Friday afternoon during the trial of Raul Manuel Magallanez Jr.
Magallanez, now 32, is accused of raping a 13-year-old, and also has approximately 60 sexual and alcohol charges that have been combined into one trial in Lyon County District Court. The second week of the trial ended today, with the prosecution still presenting its case.
The young man who testified Friday has turned 17; however, because of a family or otherwise close relationship with several underaged witnesses and alleged victims, his name will not be used to protect their identities.
The young man said that he had begun associating with the defendant in about June 2006, after Magallanez’s nephew, who was also 15, introduced them. They spent time together about once a week initially. Later the young man began “hanging out” with Magallanez almost daily, and often spending the night at the defendant’s home.
The young man testified that Magallanez gave him marijuana and alcohol, and also supplied those drugs to other young people who came to the home.
He saw Girl Nos. 1, 2, and 3 at the home, and described instances when he was aware that at least two of them had sexual intercourse with Magallanez. He said he also knew that Girl No. 2 had intercourse with several others at the Magallanez home.
The young man said that he only “hung out” with girls his own age — 15 or 16 — and that the defendant liked younger girls.
“Like, he was just talking about how they looked good, how he liked girls that were younger,” the young man said.
He first saw sexual contact between Magallanez and Girl No. 1 at a picnic table by a lake, and that Magallanez was taking photographs with his phone.
He also observed the defendant having had oral sex with Girl No. 1 outside at the Magallanez home.
“Like, he kept on asking her how old she was and stuff,” the young man testified. “She was messin’ with him; she said 13. Then I guess that got him excited and he asked her again and she said 9. And I walked off. I didn’t really want to hear that.”
On another occasion, Magallanez, the girl and he went to Peter Pan Park, where they asked him to sit in the car while they went over to a bench.
He said he also saw sexual contact between Girl No. 2 and Magallanez.
“When I went in there (at Magallanez’s home), she was, like, dancing or something. I could tell they was all drunk because there was alcohol adn stuff there and she was acting all crazy,” the young man said. “Like, later on, he had took them back to her house and then like 20 minutes later, he went and picked up (Girl No. 2) again and then they, like, they went back to his house and that’s where they had sex.”
The young man said that he had gone into Magallanez’s room, where the lights were off and he could hear them talking.
“I went back out into the living room,” he said.
Later, he, Magallanez, and three other underaged male friends and Girl No. 2 were at Magallanez’s home drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana.
“She went into the room with Manuel and they had sex and then, like, she came out and then we went and smoked again and ... I had sex with her,” he testified. “And then I think her and (one of the underaged boys) had sex. ...”
The witness said that Magallanez had gotten angry because one of the group had intercourse with Girl No. 2 on his mother’s bed.
“And then after that, like me, Manuel and (another underaged boy) and Girl No. 2, we all went in Manuel’s room, and like Manuel had his video camera and me and (the other boy) was like messing with her, and he filmed it.”
He said that Manuel became concerned when Girl No. 2 told him that her cell phone had been taken away because of their association.
“The lady she lived with, I’m not sure who it was, but the lady she lived with took her cell phone because she didn’t, like, want her around Manuel. And then, like, I think that’s when Manuel started to get scared. He felt like she was going to go to the cops,” the young man said.
He testified that he had tried to warn him away from Girl No. 3.
“I told him she was 13, she’s got an older brother and stuff,” he said. “I told him he shouldn’t.”
He said that one night after Magallanez had dropped off Girl No. 3, the two males went into a fast-food restaurant to eat.
“When we walked in there, I noticed he had blood on his pants, and ... I was like, you know there’s blood on your pants? And he said, like, ‘Oh, sh-t!’ and that’s when he ran to the bathroom,” the witness said.
The witness said that Magallanez asked him to remove a blanket from the back seat of the car. The blanket had two blood spots about the size of a quarter, and the car seat had a blood spot of a similar size.
“Manuel cleaned the blood in the car with housecleaning stuff, like stain remover,” he said.
He testified that again warned Magallanez about the young girl.
“I was telling him not to but he kept doing it anyways,” he said.
He told a story similar to a previous witness’s account of an episode that allegedly took place during Magallanez’s break-up with the girl a couple of months later.
Girl No. 3 allegedly had told friends that she had had sexual intercourse with Magallanez and believed she was pregnant. They were arguing, and the girl left a house where she was staying the night and went to meet Magallanez. Later that night, the witness said that he went back to the house and helped the girl sneak away to meet Magallanez again.
He said they all drove together to Magallanez’s home, where the defendant told him to wait in the car.
“I sat in there for a couple of minutes and then he came back out and he gave me some weed and there was some beer in the car,” he said. “... I just sat out in the car and drank the beer and smoked while he was in there.”
He estimated that after about an hour, they came out, got in the car, and drove her back to the house.
“I asked him what’d they do, and he said they had sex,” the young man said.
The following day, the witness said he saw his own mother talking with the mother of Girl No. 3, who was crying.
“That’s when we came up with the idea for the fake e-mail,” he said. “... That’s when we started thinking of ideas to make it look like she was lying.”
Earlier witnesses have testified regarding an e-mail that was sent from Girl No. 3’s e-mail account, exonerating Magallanez of any sexual improprieties with the girl.
The witness said that he had heard Magallanez talking to her on the telephone about the sexual relationship.
“He would say, like, ‘You know we never did anything,’ and stuff. I think he recorded that once; he kept that,” he said.
He said that he and Magallanez had gone to the Emporia State University computer laboratory.
“We tried, like, to get into her e-mail account because he was going to, like, make a fake e-mail,” he said.
They managed to provide the correct answers to get the password for her e-mail account and Magallanez wrote the e-mail.
“He pretty much did the whole thing by himself,” the young man said.
He and Magallanez later took a copy of the e-mail to the police department in an effort to show that rumors started by the girl were false.
The young man’s mother testified earlier in the afternoon that she had tried to keep her son away from Magallanez.
She said that her son had had academic problems because of attention deficiency disorder, and that additional problems with school attendance had surfaced when he began the friendship with Magallanez.
Defense attorney Kip Elliot asked the mother several times if she was saying that all of the young man’s problems stemmed from Magallanez.
“I’m saying his drug and alcohol problems were because of Manuel,” the woman said.
She said the teen would say he was going to spend the night at the Magallanez home “and he would be gone two or three days and then we’d find out that manuel had taken him to Kansas City. ... At the time I still was under the impression that Manuel was 18 years old.”
She said that she had told the defendant personally that he was to leave her son alone.
“I looked right at him (Magallanez) and I said, ‘You’re not going to touch my family any more. You’re not going to ruin it any more,” the mother said, breaking into . “... I yelled it out the door.”
The woman also testified that when Magallanez got a student loan in early September 2006, she had borrowed an unspecified amount of money from him.
“Actually (the son) and I both borrowed money from him, but it was (the son’s) idea,” the woman testified. “... At that point in time I still didn’t know much about that man.”
She said that she had repaid him “every bit of it. The day I told him I’d pay him back. In cash.”