Boy Sentenced for His Role in Gang Rape

The 13-year-old Watts youth recently cleared in last year’s slaying of a Watts grandmother was ordered to the California Youth Authority on Wednesday for his part in a girl’s gang rape that preceded the slaying by minutes.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Cecil Mills, who ruled last month that the youth was not responsible for the July 26, 1996, slaying of 82-year-old Viola McClain, said the teenager’s part in the rape justified his commitment to the youth authority.

Mills found the teenager responsible for three criminal acts relating to the sexual assault and noted that the maximum adult sentence for such crimes is 37 years. But the defendant will almost certainly be released from the youth authority by age 25 unless officials can prove he is a danger to society and should be held.

“Obviously I would have liked another sentence . . . but given what the judge heard, what else could he do?” the youth’s attorney, Dwight Pearson, said after the Juvenile Court hearing in Downey.

What the judge heard was that the teenager, then 11, and five others males--only one an adult--gang-raped a 13-year-old girl in an abandoned house near the Nickerson Gardens housing project.

After that assault, the girl told police, the boy shot and killed McClain, who was gunned down next door to the rape site on her front porch when her grandson and several youths got into a fight.

During court hearings on the rape and the slaying, the girl acknowledged that she lied about seeing the youth kill McClain. A companion of the teenager was held responsible last month for the

Although the 13-year-old was held responsible in the rape, his attorney argued, there is ample indication that he is a strong candidate for some alternative to the youth authority, such as a less prison-like youth detention camp.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Lynn E. Hobbs countered that the facts in the case made it clear the teenager belonged in the youth authority.

Although ultimately agreeing that the defendant should be sent there, the judge acknowledged how the teenager’s upbringing--in a broken home in arguably the city’s toughest housing project--offered some insights into his actions.

Noting how the youth looked even more like a boy when he was first brought to court last year, Mills said: “I have this picture of this young man coming into court in Long Beach . . . and his feet didn’t touch the floor.”

With the youth’s mother struggling to raise five children and with his father, an ordained minister, far away in Alabama, the 13-year-old lacked the sort of adult male supervision that might have steered him away from trouble, Mills said.

“It is this court’s experience that mothers do a lot of things very well. . . . But one thing they do not do well is teach young boys how to be men,” he added.

Outside court, the youth’s mother said she was disappointed but not surprised that her son had been sent to the youth authority. And she maintained he is innocent: “He’s not the person everyone pictures him to be. He’s not a murderer. And I still say he’s not a rapist.”