Teen Fabricated Rape Story as Cover-Up, Deputy Says
A 13-year-old girl fabricated a story of a vicious rape to hide from her mother the fact she had gotten drunk, a sheriff’s deputy in Lancaster said Thursday.
News programs and newspapers widely reported the teenager’s story that she had been forced into a car, driven to the desert and raped a few weeks before Christmas. A composite sketch of a suspected rapist was circulated. Tips flowed in.
But during a police interview Thursday, the teen recanted, said Detective John Mayfield of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Lancaster station.
“The girl was intoxicated, and wanted to stay in the good graces of her mother,” Mayfield said.
After receiving new leads on the case Thursday, Mayfield said he “went over and talked with her again.”
“That’s when she told me,” he said.
Mayfield said that he now believes the present version is correct, and that the teen was under no pressure to recant her story.
The girl had claimed she was walking home from a baby-sitting job at 4:30 p.m. Dec. 12 when a man in a light burgundy Geo Metro dragged her into his car near 10th Street East in Lancaster, drove her into the desert and raped her.
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