RSSRape victim testifies against alleged attacker
Visibly shaken woman says she was threatened, then held down at knifepointYakima Herald-Republic
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YAKIMA, Wash. -- Crying and at times covering her face with her hands, the woman on the witness stand described how she pleaded with her attacker to let her go.
"All I was telling him was to let me go, that I have two daughters ... " she said through a Spanish-language court interpreter. "He said if you don't do what I'm telling you to do, you'll never see your daughters again."
The 29-year-old single mother testified Wednesday morning, shortly after opening statements in the trial of a rape suspect who is also being accused of using employment advertisements on a local Spanish-language radio station to lure other victims.
The woman said she went to a Buena orchard a little after 6 a.m. one August morning in 2007 looking for work.
While she was looking for someone to talk to about the possibility of picking pears, she said a man approached her car. She said he encouraged her to follow him, which she did. Then, she said, he pulled out a knife, ordered her out of the car and raped her at knifepoint on the orchard floor.
She also told the court that she fought back, kicking her assailant in the groin, but he threatened her, saying he would do "very, very bad" things to her if she didn't comply.
"I wanted to see my daughters again," she said.
Forty-five-year-old Rodolfo Ramirez Tinajero of Toppenish is accused of raping the woman on
Aug. 6, 2007. The charge is first-degree rape while armed with a deadly weapon. If convicted, he faces a sentence of up to life in prison.
In her opening statement, Patti Powers, a senior deputy prosecuting attorney for Yakima County and supervising attorney of the sexual assault-domestic violence unit of the prosecuting attorney's office, told the court to expect to hear from numerous witnesses, including law enforcement officers, a forensic scientist and a nurse.
The prosecution is also expected to call a woman to testify that she responded to an advertisement broadcast on KDNA 91.9 FM, or Radio Cadena, which gave a phone number to call for women looking for field work. The woman is expected to say she called that number in April 2007 -- almost four months before the alleged rape incident -- then met Ramirez Tinajero in a Lower Valley field, where a similar attack occurred.
Ramirez Tinajero is facing a separate charge in that case.
In his opening statement, Adolfo Banda, a criminal defense attorney in Yakima who is representing Ramirez Tinajero, urged the jury of five women and seven men to "pay very close attention" and "listen carefully."
"It's imperative that you do that," he told them. "I cannot stress that point enough."
The defense will argue that Ramirez Tinajero and the woman who testified Wednesday had consensual sex.
She lives in Yakima now but was living in Sunnyside when she said the incident occurred.
As a general policy, The Herald-Republic does not identify victims of sexual crimes.
The woman, whose daughters are 9- and 5-years-old, testified Wednesday that she had "never seen him before."
Speaking through tears before asking for a moment to compose herself during testimony, she told the court, "I am embarrassed."
When the attack was over, she said, "He held my hand and walked me out (of the trees) like we were boyfriend and girlfriend."
Judge Michael Schwab is hearing the case in Yakima County Superior Court. The trial is expected to last about a week. Ramirez Tinajero is expected to take the witness stand on Friday, Banda said.
Ramirez Tinajero was convicted in another sex-related case in Yakima County in 1994 and was deported after completing a 17-month sentence, according to court records. In 2000, he was charged with forcible sex abuse and lewdness in Utah.
When local sheriff's detectives arrested him in August 2007, they said he had several identification documents for his real name, as well as two aliases.
ughh. look at him...GUILTY!!
Report ViolationRodolfo Tinajero, the kind of person that gives Mexicans a bad rep. Guilty indeed.
Report Violation
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