Boy, 14, Is Called 2-Time Rapist

A 14-year-old Anaheim boy will be tried as an adult on charges of raping two boys at knifepoint near their school, prosecutors said Monday.

Jose Ignacio Avina is the youngest person in the county ever charged as an adult with sexual assault, officials said. The teenager was charged Friday with assaulting the two boys, ages 12 and 14, each six weeks apart, near Ball Junior High School in Anaheim.

“Kidnapping for rape, use of a weapon to forcibly sexually assault somebody, having multiple sexual assault victims ... all those things warrant charging him as an adult,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Kal Kaliban.

Avina is set to be arraigned Dec. 10 at North Justice Center in Fullerton. He faces life in prison if convicted on all 12 counts.

He is being held in lieu of $1 million bail at Juvenile Hall. His attorney could not be reached for comment, and his family members could not be reached late Monday.

Prosecutors believe that four times, from Oct. 4 to Nov. 15, Avina approached boys at Ball Road and Euclid Avenue, near the school, and demanded money while threatening them with a knife. In two cases, prosecutors say, he also raped his victims.

The first incident allegedly took place after school Oct. 4, when prosecutors believe Avina forcibly sodomized the 14-year-old boy.

On Oct. 27, they say, Avina kidnapped and robbed, but did not rape, a 12-year-old boy before school.

Then, on Nov. 15, Avina allegedly kidnapped, forcibly sodomized and orally copulated another 12-year-old boy before school. Within an hour, police said, he failed in an attempt to rob a fourth boy, also 12.

The kidnapping charges reflect allegations that Avina forced some of his victims to go a short distance with him.

Kaliban said he believed Avina may have once been a student at Ball Junior High but no longer attended. Avina was not friends with the alleged victims, Kaliban added, but may have had a passing acquaintance with them. School officials declined to comment.

California law allows prosecutors to charge children as young as 14 as adults if their alleged crimes are punishable by life in prison.

Although rare, there have been a few such cases against teenagers in the area.

In July, a 15-year-old Laguna Niguel boy was charged as an adult after being accused of murdering his 72-year-old next-door neighbor during a burglary.

In an incident described by prosecutors as a “Sopranos”-type slaying, two half-brothers, including one who was 15 at the time, were accused last year of strangling their 41-year-old mother, then severing her head and hands and dumping her torso in a ravine off Ortega Highway near San Juan Capistrano. Jason Bautista and his younger brother, Matthew Montejo, both pleaded not guilty and await trial.

In 2001, five teenagers, the youngest being 15-year-old Phu Quoc Tran, were charged with gang-raping two Tustin girls, ages 13 and 15, after severely beating their boyfriends during a late-night walk in Black Star Canyon. All were eventually convicted, with Tran sentenced to more than 17 years in the California Youth Authority.

And in 1996, a 14-year-old Yorba Linda boy confessed to shooting his 42-year-old mother to death after school.

“As far as rape goes, though,” said Mark Macaulay, a spokesman for the Orange County district attorney’s office, “we’ve never had somebody this young do something this serious.”

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Times staff writers Mai Tran, Joel Rubin and David Haldane contributed to this report.