Woman Tells Court That She Was Raped, Held Hostage 2 Days

An illegal immigrant from Mexico testified Tuesday that she was repeatedly raped and sodomized by members of a smuggling ring while being held hostage last year in a Canoga Park apartment.

During her two-day ordeal, the woman said, her boyfriend, viciously beaten and bound by his hands and feet, was forced to watch her and his aunt being raped.

Holding back tears as she answered questions through an interpreter, the woman told a Los Angeles federal court jury that the rapes and beatings were ordered by the smuggling ring’s alleged leader, Mario Arenas Morales.

She said Arenas took delight in watching her being sexually assaulted, uttering obscenities and taunting her boyfriend at the same time.

“He laughed and cursed at me, never calling me anything less than a whore,” she recounted.

Arenas and six others went on trial Tuesday on charges of smuggling, transporting and harboring illegal immigrants and hostage-taking, which carries a maximum life prison term.

In his opening statement to the jury, Arenas’ defense lawyer all but admitted his client was involved in smuggling people and acknowledged that the beatings occurred, but he denied the rape allegations.

Attorney Jose C. Rojo said that while being driven from the border area to the Canoga Park drop house, the woman’s boyfriend and another illegal immigrant tried to force the driver of the smuggler’s van to let them out on the freeway by grabbing him around the throat.

More than 20 people were in the van. They were to be held at the Canoga Park drop house until relatives in the United States paid the smugglers $1,200 per person.

Rojo said the men tried to strangle the driver, but he managed to keep going to his destination.

What happened when they arrived at the drop house was “human nature retaliation,” Rojo said, though, “I’m not saying it was justified.”

He also told the jury that DNA tests of all seven defendants had ruled them out as rapists of the two women.

However, Assistant U.S. Atty. Tracy L. Wilkison told the jury that after being gang-raped, the women tried to “wash away the evil” by scrubbing themselves in the shower several times.

While accusing Arenas of ordering the rapes, the younger woman said she could not identify any of the defendants on trial as having committed them.

After two days of captivity, the women were driven to a deserted location near Brawley and left there after their relatives failed to come up with the ransom money.

The men were taken to an agricultural field outside Moorpark and freed.

Ventura County sheriff’s deputies found them and rushed them to a hospital. Both had been badly beaten on the head and body. Authorities said the smugglers hit them with wrenches and tried to pull off the boyfriend’s ear with pliers.

A major break in the case came a few days later while the younger woman was being interviewed by an INS agent at a relative’s home.

One alleged ring member, Leonel Estudillo Martinez, 21, just arrested while trying to make an illegal border crossing, called her from the U.S. Border Patrol office in El Centro to apologize for her mistreatment.

Estudillo was brought to Los Angeles and led INS investigators to the Canoga Park drop house, where the immigrants had been held.

After arresting one suspect there, the agents learned of another drop house in Pacoima. They arrested the six other defendants there, including Arenas, who is also charged with trying to ram a federal agent’s car in a getaway attempt.