Family, Pals Defend Rape Suspect, 14

Friends describe Jose Ignacio Avina as a bully who likes taking things from other children, while his mother believes he’s a kind, misunderstood child. But all agree that the 14-year-old is not a rapist.

“He is not a perfect person, but I don’t believe he would make a mistake like that,” his mother, Matilda Avina, said Tuesday, wiping tears from her swollen eyes during an interview. “He’s not capable of doing it.”

Avina is accused of raping two boys, 12 and 14, at knifepoint near their Anaheim junior high school, making him the youngest person ever in the county to be charged as an adult with a sexual offense. The boy is being held on $1-million bail at Juvenile Hall.

While Avina’s friends and family expressed disbelief, school district administrators said they had waited to tell parents about the alleged attacks until they had more information. Parents received a recorded telephone call Tuesday evening telling them that Ball Junior High School was safe and that a follow-up letter with more details would be sent today. Some families said they should have been told earlier.

“I’m shocked,” said Alex Fausto, waiting to pick up his 12-year-old son at the school. “If they knew about this, how come they haven’t let us know about it?”

In addition to the two alleged rapes, Avina is accused of robbing a third boy and trying to rob a fourth as they walked to and from school within the last month, all from Oct. 4 to Nov. 15. Prosecutors say the youth approached the boys with a knife near Euclid Avenue and Ball Road, then took them to secluded areas to steal their money or assault them. For that reason, Avina is also accused of kidnapping. And with alleged use of a weapon, he faces 12 counts in all.

Officials with the Anaheim Union High School District said they were not aware of the investigation until Monday. District policy, said Tracy Brennan, an assistant superintendent, generally calls for administrators such as principals to notify the district -- and police -- of any serious situation.

But one seventh-grader, who said Avina tried to rob him last week, said he told the principal at Ball about the incident. The 12-year-old, interviewed after school Tuesday, said Avina, clutching a knife with a 2- to 3-inch blade, tried to rob him Nov. 15 as he was walking to school. He said Avina told him to give him “a dollar or anything else valuable.” When the 12-year-old said he didn’t have anything, Avina ordered him to go into a nearby alley.

The boy said he dropped his backpack and ran back across Ball Road. A woman who saw the incident picked up the boy’s bag and gave it back to him. The boy said he reported the incident at the school office, where he said Principal Diane Bethencourt showed him photos of several boys, including Avina.

The boy said he picked out Avina’s photo, then sat down later that day with investigators from the Anaheim Police Department, who questioned him and asked him to sketch the knife he had seen.

Police believe that, earlier that day, Avina had raped the other 12-year-old boy.

“It’s just really shocking when you think about a 14-year-old engaging in this kind of criminal conduct,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Kal Kaliban.

Brennan, the assistant superintendent, said she felt horrible for what the alleged victims had endured.

“I feel devastated for the students that this allegedly happened to,” she said. “But I’m glad that it has come to light and police have put an end to it.”

Other students at the junior high said Avina had long been a troublemaker, and officials said he was kicked out of the school last year. Before that, the students said, he frequently tried to steal from other boys’ gym lockers and one time tried to take a student’s bike.

In an interview at the Anaheim apartment where Avina lives with his parents and three younger siblings, his mother said she was shocked when she learned about the allegations.

Police arrested Avina on Nov. 15, when he was painting a bicycle in the alley behind their home, his mother said. She has since visited him at Juvenile Hall.

“He just said, ‘I don’t want to be here, Mom. I want to be with my family for Christmas,’ ” his mother said.

The mother said she stays home with the children, and the boy’s father works long hours as a company manager, she said.

He was a good student in grade school but was expelled from Ball last year over attendance, officials said. He has since been enrolled in a high school independent study program.

“He was a protective brother, and he was nice,” said his sister, Maria Avina, an eighth-grader. “He’s not like what the police are saying.”

She said school was tough Tuesday.

“The kids are making fun of me and harassing me,” she said, crying. “My brother is innocent until he is proven guilty.”

Avina’s friends, having often hung out with him after school, said they were shocked.

“We’d hang out and we’d pick up girls,” said Leonardo Sanchez, who has known Avina since he moved into his apartment complex five years ago. “He never had an interest in boys. Maybe he’d bully or rob someone, but not kidnap and rape.”

Avina’s mother said her son couldn’t have committed the crimes because he was in Juvenile Hall for other, unrelated offenses during three of them. She said her son had never been sexually or physically abused.

Psychologists reflected on the allegations Tuesday.

If the account is true, “someone had to turn this on in him,” said Los Angeles child psychologist Robert R. Butterworth.

Sex abuse victims tend to believe that if they abuse others they will regain power, said South Pasadena child psychologist Linda Bortell, president of the Los Angeles County Psychological Assn.

“The victim turns into the perpetrator,” she said. “It’s a way for them to get some kind of control over the situation.”

What Avina is accused of doing is “very gutsy,” Bortell said. Taking the kind of risk involved in accosting near-strangers, she said, shows that an abuser thinks he can get away with it or that he wants to be caught.