Woman Testifies of Ordeal in Camper : Crime: She tells court she was kidnaped, raped, and held for 14 months.

A woman who says she was repeatedly raped and beaten while held inside a camper for nearly four months testified Monday that her ordeal began when her alleged attacker grabbed her from behind and pulled her into the vehicle after she had responded to a job tip.

The woman, a 24-year-old Salvadoran who had arrived in this country just days before she was allegedly kidnaped, was the first witness to testify in a preliminary hearing for Paul Garcia and two women, Yolanda Garcia and Margarita Ruvalcaba, who allegedly helped him.

The three are accused of imprisoning the Salvadoran and a Guatemalan woman, who allegedly was held inside the camper for 14 months before escaping.

The defendants have pleaded not guilty to more than 50 felony counts of rape, kidnaping and slavery.

The woman who testified in Los Angeles Municipal Court on Monday said Yolanda Garcia approached her on a sidewalk and told her of possible work with her brother. To get the job, Garcia purportedly told the alleged victim, she would have to fill out an application at a rickety white-and-beige camper parked nearby.

The woman testified that she was leaning against the camper, her back to its door, when Paul Garcia suddenly pulled her inside. The alleged abuses started immediately, she said.

“They took off my clothes and shoes,” she testified. “The man beat me, with his fists on my face, and then he tied me up.”

He then raped her repeatedly, she said. The woman also told of being handcuffed, chained and tortured with electrical shocks.

Yolanda Garcia “connected the end of the wires to a socket, and (Paul Garcia) would connect the other end to me . . . to my legs and neck,” the woman testified.

The camper case came to light last September, after the Guatemalan woman purportedly escaped and went to police, who sought the public’s help in locating the camper and its occupants--which in addition to the adults included six children, 9 and younger.

The camper had crisscrossed the Los Angeles area for months, parking at times in the back yards of low-income neighborhoods, where people would take pity on the children but never suspect the alleged abuse inside.

At one point in Monday’s proceedings, an incredulous Judge Glenette Blackwell asked how it was possible for so many adults and children to sleep inside the small camper.

Ruvalcaba and the children slept in an upper bunk, the two Garcias slept in the lower bunk and she and the Guatemalan woman were forced to sleep on the floor, shackled to part of the camper, the Salvadoran woman testified.

The defense has yet to present its case, but Sue Brown, who is defending Paul Garcia, said a completely different picture of events would emerge when her client’s side is told.

Part of the defense seemed aimed at distinguishing among the three defendants. Defense attorney Rickard Santwier, who represents Yolanda Garcia, repeatedly objected to the use of the pronoun “they” when the alleged victim described who was carrying out the abuses.