In addition to supplying their East Side neighborhood with drugs, brothers Juan and Bobby Moreno had a side offer for addicts who dropped by their crack den three years ago, prosecutors said Tuesday.
For $25 extra, neighborhood men were allowed to rape a 13-year-old girl the Moreno brothers were holding captive, Assistant District Attorney Kirsta Melton told jurors in opening statements at Juan Moreno's trial.
“They would keep her drugged up. They would keep her tied up,” Melton said. “They kidnapped her, they raped her together in concert, they threatened her life and they sold her to man after man.”
Juan Moreno, 45, is the first to go to trial of four men, including his younger brother, charged with assaulting the girl from the last week of 2007 until January 2008, when authorities said she escaped.
He faces between 25 years and life in prison without parole if jurors find him guilty of super aggravated sexual assault of a child. He could also face five years to life in prison if convicted of human trafficking or aggravated kidnapping with intent to compel prostitution. A fourth charge, compelling prostitution, is punishable by up to 20 years.
Moreno was arrested last year, more than a year and a half after the kidnapping was alleged to have occurred. The Bexar County Sheriff's Office Human Trafficking Unit began investigating after the Poe Middle School student made an outcry to her juvenile probation officer.
The girl's credibility should be an issue, defense attorney William Maynard told jurors in the 379th state District Court.
“If you decide this case upon emotion, an innocent person will go to prison,” he said. “She lied to her probation officer, she lied to the police officers. She will lie in this court.”
The girl, now 16, is expected to testify Wednesday.
Prosecutors Melton and Mary Green said she was locked in a bathroom and overpowered by the Moreno brothers after she went there to buy drugs.
She “seemed like the perfect victim — 13 years old, constant runaway, truant from school and addicted to drugs,” Melton said. “She was someone who was available and no one would miss too much.”
But despite often disappearing, the girl would always call each day to say she was OK, her mother testified Tuesday. The time of the alleged kidnapping was the only period in which she never heard from her daughter, she said.
Authorities said the girl escaped after a neighborhood man saw her in the brothers' doorway and recognized her. Prosecutors asked news media not to identify the man for his safety. He testified that he could hear Juan Moreno's voice from inside, yelling at the girl to return to the bedroom.
“That's when I grabbed her hand, told her, ‘Come on girl,' and took off running,” the man testified. “She looked like hell. She was distraught. She didn't want to tell me anything.”
Prosecutors said the girl didn't make an outcry to authorities for months because the Moreno brothers, both alleged gang members, lived in her neighborhood. After one escape attempt, they held a knife to her and told her they knew she had younger siblings, Melton said.