A man accused of raping a 13-year-old girl allegedly solicited the girl’s friend as the relationship between him and the 13-year-old wound down, according to testimony this morning in Lyon County District Court.
The 13-year-old was identified as Girl No. 3 when she testified earlier this week.
Girl No. 3’s girlfriend, now 14, will not be identified by name. She took the witness stand today in the trial of Raul Manuel Magallanez Jr., who also faces about 60 charges of illegal sexual and alcohol involvement with girls from 13 to 15 years of age.
The girlfriend said that initially Magallanez, who is known as Manuel, began calling her to talk about the 13-year-old. During direct questioning by Assistant County Attorney Amy Aranda, the girlfriend said the defendant told her “that he loved (Girl No. 3)... that he wouldn’t hurt her and that he wanted to be with her. ... That he wanted to have sex with her.”
The girlfriend said that she felt uncomfortable hearing that from Magallanez.
“Like when he’d talk about having sex with (Girl No. 3) and being with me, and said he wanted to marry her, and like that,” the girl said, crying several times during her testimony.
“He told me that I was pretty and that I was easy to talk to and that I was a good listener, just those things,” she said.
Later, he told her “that he wanted to have sex with me and that he didn’t like (Girl No. 3) any more, and that he’d kind of just moved on from her. ... Sometimes he’d want me to sneak out and go see him.”
The girlfriend said that did not.
She said that she and Girl No. 3, who was babysitting her little brother, had met once at Peter Pan Park and soon were joined by Magallanez and one of his friends, who is a brother of a friend of the girls.
The girlfriend said that they moved away from the playground to talk.
“She told her little brother to play with the other kids on the playground and that she would be back,” the girlfriend said.
The four talked for “probably an hour and a half or longer. ...Her little brother thought that she was lost, so he called the police on someone’s phone,” the girlfriend testified. “The police officer came and helped them look for her.”
When the officer found the girls, she said, “he told her that she should watch out for her little brother and not to leave him alone with no one watching him.”
Magallanez and his friend got in a car and left when the police arrived.
The girlfriend testified that she and Girl No. 3 were babysitting at the home of a mutual friend’s sister when Girl No. 3 and Manuel were having an argument on the telephone over their break-up. Girl No. 3 later left the house when Manuel came over, and they walked to Walnut School playground.
The girl said she followed the pair because she it was dark and she was worried that something would happen because Magallanez was angry as he walked ahead of Girl No. 3.
“That night at the playground, she ran up behind him and she was grabbing him and she was crying,” the girl testified.
The next morning, Girl No. 3 told her that she had sneaked out of the house again during the night to go to Magallanez’s house, the girlfriend testified. She said that had happened on other occasions.
“She invited me and (another friend) to stay the night at her house and she, like, just left,” the girlfriend testified.
She said that Girl No. 3 came back in about an hour, and said that she had met Magallanez in the Logan Avenue school parking lot and talked.
The girlfriend that on another occasion, she had been talking on the telephone to Girl No. 3, who told her she was getting ready see Magallanez.
“She was climbing out of the window, she said,” the girlfriend testified. “He was parked outside her house is what she said and she was just going to walk over and get in the car.”
The girlfriend said that Girl No. 3 later told her and friends that she’d had sexual intercourse with the defendant and thought she was pregnant. The girlfriend said that the girl later told her she had said that because Magallanez had broken up with her.
Magallanez called the girlfriend often to talk about what was happening with Girl No. 3.
“Because he wanted to know if everything was okay and who found out about it and stuff,” the girlfriend testified.
She said that she had not believed everything Girl No. 3 had told her.
“I didn’t really think that he was telling the truth, either,” the girlfriend said.
During the afternoon, a teenaged boy and his mother testified about their concerns over the defendant’s relationships with young girls.
The young man who testified Friday has turned 17; however, because of family and other 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 was 15 when he met Magallanez and soon began “hanging out” with him almost daily. He often spent the night at the defendant’s home.
The young man said that Magallanez gave him marijuana and alcohol, and also supplied them to other young people who came to the home.
He saw Girl Nos. 1, 2, and 3 there, and described instances when he believed they had sexual intercourse with Magallanez.
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, he said, 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.
On another occasion, Magallanez, the girl and he went to Peter Pan Park, where they asked him to wait in the car while they went over to a bench.
He said he also saw sexual contact between Girl No. 2 and Magallanez.
“I could tell they was all drunk because there was alcohol and stuff there and she was acting all crazy,” the young man said. “...then they went back to his house and that’s where they had sex.”
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. ...
“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 ... 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.
“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.
“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 take 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 of an incident that allegedly took place during Magallanez’s subsequent break-up with the girl.
Girl No. 3 allegedly had told friends that she’d 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 drove 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 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 her.
The witness said that he had heard Magallanez talking to her on the telephone.
“He would say, like, ‘You know we never did anything,’ and stuff. I think he recorded that once; he kept that,” he said.
“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 truancy had surfaced when he became friends with Magallanez.
Defense attorney Kip Elliot asked 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 that she had told Magallanez that he was to leave her son alone.
“I looked right at him 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 tears. “... I yelled it out the door.”
The woman testified that when Magallanez got a student loan in early September 2006, she had borrowed money from him.
“Actually (the son) and I both borrowed money from him, but it was (the son’s) idea,” the woman testified.
She said that she had repaid him “every bit of it. The day I told him I’d pay him back. In cash.”