Efrain E.

Efrain E. was a hard-working family man who spent his off days trying to make the family residence a show place for his wife. Whatever she asked him to do, he did it, and he rarely had a free day. He was even hand digging a swimming pool because he could not afford it any other way.

He was from Mexico, and his English was better than my Spanish, but he still had some difficulty communicating.

When I met him, another lawyer was trying to convince him to accept a plea bargain that would send him to prison, and he would be a registered sex offender for life. He had refused the offer, and the lawyer was in the process of abandoning him.

The case arose after his wife announced that she was leaving him for another man, and that she was taking his daughters. Efrain was devastated. For the next couple of months he had no idea where they had gone. Then, one day, his wife came to his home, with her boyfriend, and demanded that he surrender the house to her and her boyfriend, claiming that they had nowhere to live, and their children would be homeless.

Efrain was crushed, and angry. He told her "never", and slammed the door in their faces.

The following day he was arrested for forcibly sodomizing his eldest daughter, then 12-years old, since she was four years of age.

It has become a very common practice in divorce cases for one spouse to accuse the other of child molesting. That gives the accuser power. The accused loses the home, and is only allowed visitation with "supervision." Again, it is a difficult, if not impossible bell to "un-ring."

In Efrain's case, he was in jail, and was being pushed by his prior lawyer to admit something that he vehemently denied.

His sister-in-law hired me, and I began meeting with him in order to determine how to proceed. There was no doubt we were going to trial.

The medical records showed no evidence of any trauma to the girl's body. The girl was claiming that her father had come into her room every night since she was four, sometimes twice each night, and that he had forcibly sodomized her. She reported no pain, no bleeding, and no other complications that should have resulted from this conduct. He was charged with enough counts that if convicted, he would have spent the rest of his life in prison.

The prosecution physician was the same one as in Rodney's case (above), and her testimony was that the absence of evidence of sexual abuse was common, even in a case like this where the alleged abuse was forced, and occurred daily for several years.

When the girl testified, she lied about her age, date of birth, where she attended school, and even the classes she was taking. I had subpoenaed school records, and of course her father knew her age and date of birth.

On cross-examination, I got her to admit to her lies. I asked her why she lied. She looked at the prosecutor and said "I thought I was supposed to lie." The prosecutor looked embarrassed, but continued to proceed with her case.

Needless to say, the jury acquitted Efrain very quickly.