Man Convicted in Rape of Girl, Assault of Other

Kyle Joseph Borges, who was acquitted of rape three years ago when crucial evidence against him was not available for trial, was found guilty Thursday of the kidnap and rape of a 12-year-old Huntington Beach girl and the assault of a 14-year-old Dana Point girl.

Borges, 31, has two other rape trials pending, one in Orange County and another in Long Beach. If convicted in all of them, Borges could face up to 80 years in prison, attorneys say.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jane Shade said she called the rape victim, now an eighth-grader, after the conviction and the girl expressed relief at the news.

“She said she feels safe again,” Shade said. “And relieved that she doesn’t have to come back to court.”

The girl has had to face Borges from the witness stand twice--once in a pretrial hearing and last week at his trial. She was so upset before testifying last week that Superior Court Judge Robert R. Fitzgerald cleared the courtroom of all spectators in an attempt to make her more comfortable.

She was abducted on Sept. 24, 1989, from her home in the Sea Cliff on the Greens community, which is gated but not secured. She had been sleeping on a living room sofa with a girlfriend when a man broke into the house just before dawn and grabbed her.

Police said she was taken to a rural, wooded area by the man in his pickup truck, raped, and then dumped naked along the roadside.

Less than two weeks before, a 14-year-old in Dana Point found a man standing above her with his hand on her mouth while she had been sleeping in her bed. The man ran when the girl’s mother awoke.

Both victims, plus the 12-year-old friend of the Huntington Beach girl who was there the night of the rape, all identified Borges as the attacker in the two incidents.

Also, blood was found in the front of Borges’ pickup matching that of the Huntington Beach victim, and his tennis shoes matched prints left near the girl’s house.

“He is a predator,” Shade said. “This case has been a highly emotional ordeal for his victims.”

Borges was found guilty of rape, kidnaping, a forced sexual act, child molestation by force, and burglary in the Huntington Beach case. In the Dana Point incident, he was found guilty of assault with intent to commit rape and burglary.

The jury, which took less than a full day of deliberations, acquitted Borges on two counts of attempted burglary--in relation to two neighbors of the Huntington Beach girl--but found him guilty instead of lesser charges of attempted trespass.

Borges’ attorney, Patrick McNeal, has declined to discuss the trial. McNeal argued that the girls’ identification of Borges as the attacker may have been shaky because they were so frightened. But he offered no alibi for Borges’ whereabouts on the two occasions.

Borges did not testify.

Borges was acquitted in the rape of an Anaheim woman in 1988 after prosecutors were unable to produce genetic blood test information against him. The private lab conducting the tests had a backlog and could not complete the results in time for the trial.

Once the results were completed, however, prosecutors claimed that they showed that Borges was the rapist.

DNA evidence has been hailed by prosecutors as the greatest breakthrough in the gathering of criminal evidence in decades. Essentially, a blood sample taken from a defendant is compared against tissue in semen left in the victim.

Criminalists in the DNA field claim that the tests can pinpoint with almost 100% accuracy whether a defendant is the perpetrator of a sex crime. Before DNA, blood tests could show only whether semen was left by a man with the same blood type as the defendant.

Shade did not have DNA evidence in the 12-year-old girl’s rape.

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

Borges’ sentencing in the case is set for March 8. However, it may be postponed until his other cases are resolved.