Young Huntington Beach Rape, Kidnap Victim Weeps in Court

A 12-year-old girl abducted from her home in an exclusive gated community in Huntington Beach took the stand Wednesday against the man accused of raping her.

Kyle Joseph Borges, acquitted in another rape case three years ago because genetic tests pointing to his guilt were not prepared in time for trial, is accused of kidnaping the girl Sept. 24, 1989, as she slept in her home at Sea Cliff on the Greens.

The girl was in such distress Wednesday that she could barely make it to the witness stand.

Superior Court Judge Robert R. Fitzgerald ordered the courtroom cleared of all spectators to make it easier for her.

But she broke down and cried even before court began. The prosecutor hugged her and, with help from the girl’s family, led her to a waiting room until it was time for her to testify.

Jurors sat transfixed earlier in the day as Deputy Dist. Atty. Jane L. Shade described how an assailant broke into the girl’s house, carried her from her bed where she was sleeping with a girlfriend, held her face down in the cab of his pickup truck as he drove away, then raped her in a wooded area.

“He left her there all alone, still naked and holding onto her clothes,” Shade said. “But she had the presence of mind to walk down the dirt lane barefoot and make her way to a telephone. She called her grandmother.”

Shade’s evidence against Borges is formidable. Both the victim and her girlfriend, now eighth-graders, have identified Borges both in a lineup and when they testified Wednesday.

Blood matching the victim’s was found in the front of his white pickup, and shoe prints matching Borges’ Nike running shoes were found at the girl’s home.

In addition to the Huntington Beach incident, Borges is accused at this trial of attempted sexual assault on a 14-year-old Dana Point girl two weeks before the Huntington Beach rape. The girl said her assailant put his hand over her mouth while she was in bed asleep but then left the house when her mother woke up.

Borges’ attorney, Patrick D. McNeal, has reserved his opening statement but is expected to argue that there are areas of “reasonable doubt” in which the victims could be mistaken that Borges was the assailant.

McNeal has declined to comment on the facts of the case.

Borges, a former construction worker, also is accused of raping a 40-year-old Huntington Beach woman and a 60-year-old Long Beach woman.

Those two attacks, as well as the rape of the 12-year-old, occurred after Borges was released from Orange County Jail after his 1988 acquittal.

In that case, Borges provided alibi witnesses for the time of the offense. But the case went to trial before prosecutors could present their best evidence, results from DNA genetic testing, which compares a defendant’s blood type to semen found on the victim. DNA is hailed by prosecutors as more than 99% accurate in determining whether a specific defendant--not just someone with that defendant’s blood type--was the rapist.

But Orange County did not have its own DNA lab at the time, and the private lab where the test samples were sent had a backlog and could not get the work done in time for trial. Prosecutors contend that the DNA evidence would have resulted in Borges’ conviction in the case.

County Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder cited the Borges case last year to spur other board members into quicker action in setting up a DNA lab in Orange County. The county now does some DNA testing.

Although Shade does not have DNA evidence in the 12-year-old’s case, there is a DNA test in the pending Huntington Beach case.