Ex-Border Patrol agent gets 15 years for sexual assault
A 45-year-old man, who has been convicted of the sexual assault of a 23-year-old woman that took place in 2003, still claimed on his sentencing date that what he did was a consensual act. However, his victim told a very different story. The man has been found guilty of abusing his power as a Border Patrol agent to rape the woman three times.
In 2001, the ex-Border Patrol agent was also accused of molesting a 16-year-old female during a checkpoint stop. Those charges were later dropped.
According to court documents, in 2007, the Border Patrol agent stopped a bus en route to Dallas about 80 miles north of the Mexican border. The female member of a family on board that bus was singled out by the agent and told to get off the bus for a second inspection. The bus moved on with the remaining family members aboard.
The woman, a U.S. citizen returning from living in Mexico for several years, had given her birth certificate to the agent. He withheld the document and told the woman to take a bus and meet him in another city. Once there, he picked her up, took her to a nearby motel and raped her multiple times.
The following morning, court records say, the Border Patrol agent sent the woman to Dallas with her birth certificate. When she was home, her family members reported the incident to the Mexican Consulate.
The man was sentenced to more than 15 years in jail for the sex crime. Prosecutors argued that the man abused his power as a government official to force himself onto the victim, and it seems the jury agreed. The judge said the man had failed to act according to the oath of a law enforcement official, tarnishing the reputation of thousands of other law enforcement agents.
Source: The Associated Press, “Border agent gets 15 years in 2003 sexual assault,” Christopher Sherman, 1 July 2011