commentary by Patrick H. Moore
Hugging the San Pablo Bay, Richmond, CA has always been a rough working class town. During WWII it was shipyards; in later decades the Chevron petroleum refinery has provided employment to tens of thousands of hardworking people. Like most blue collar California communities, the population is racially and ethnically mixed.
Until recently, Richmond was home to Raul Ochoa, a man who appears to have torn a page out of Ariel Castro’s handbook. At some point prior to 1998, a female relative, who we will call Ms. Doe, came to live with Ochoa’s family. Reading between the lines, we can surmise that Ochoa’s pervert radar must have immediately perked up at the sight of the girl who was 12-years old in 1998.
According to a report in the San Jose Mercury News, at some point prior to 1998, Ochoa reportedly asked his wife if he could have sex with Ms. Doe. Ochoa’s wife said no and Ochoa said that he was “just joking”.
As we know, men of rectitude do not joke about having sex with little girls, and if someone does, it’s probably a good idea to quarantine the individual immediately. Ochoa, however, appears to have run his household with an iron hand and the Contra Costa county District Attorney Ryan Wagner stated that both Ms. Doe and Ochoa’s wife suffered “significant violence” at his hands.
It’s unclear when the physical abuse began, but the sexual abuse dates back to 1998 when she was 12 years old. Here’s how Ochoa executed his heinous crime:
He decided that Ms. Doe would live in a plywood shed with a single mattress behind the house. From that point on, Ochoa repeatedly raped her in the shed, as many as two to three times every week. That adds up to at least 1,500 rapes during her 15 years of captivity.
D.A. Wagner explained: “Basically, her entire childhood was more or less stolen from her. He [Ochoa] convinced her it [the shack] was going to be a place to watch movies together and a place for the family to hang out, but it turned into something much worse.”
It appears that Ms. Doe was allowed to go into the main house to use the bathroom and possibly to eat, but was mostly sequestered in the plywood shed. Ochoa reportedly forced her to work for his landscaping business and — oddly enough — home-schooled her.
Because Ms. Doe was not held in strict seclusion like Ariel Castro’s victims, and went out to work with Ochoa, she had some interaction with the outside world. On one occasion, a boy asked her to dance at a family party which infuriated the tempestuous Ochoa to such a degree that he dragged her home, forced her to strip in front of the family and burned her dress.
* * * * *
Although the details are unclear, at some point, Ms. Doe’s “siblings”, who may have actually been her cousins, convinced her to flee. They arranged to have a car waiting and in August of 2012, the victim – who by this point was in her mid-20s – told Ochoa she was going to the restroom. Instead she ran outside, jumped in the waiting vehicle and was driven to the Richmond police station.
While talking to the police, Ms. Doe, who reportedly acted far younger than her chronological age, described herself as a runaway and told the interviewing officer, Mitch Peixoto, that she wanted to go to another city. Officer Peixoto appears to have patiently plied her with questions and soon realized that she had suffered a horrifying catalog of abuse and mental torture.
A
mong other things, Ms. Doe told the officer the story of how Ochoa had stripped her naked and burned her party dress.
Based on Ms. Doe’s attitude and general demeanor during the interview, Officer Piexoto realized that she had little sense of just how inhumane her treatment had been.
Ochoa was arrested shortly after the station house interview.
After his arrest, the prosecutors faced the problem of gaining a conviction without the victim being forced to undergo the new ordeal of testifying against Ochoa. With that in mind, a plea deal calling for a 22-year sentence was ultimately worked out, sparing Ms. Doe the ordeal of having to face Ochoa in court and reliving the horrors of the past 14 years. The defendant is 52 and will be required to serve 85 per cent of his sentence which means he will be a “free man”, if a registered sex offender can be considered free, at around the age of 71.
Richmond Police Capt. Mark Gagan understands fully why the plea agreement had to be hammered out, but he is not convinced that, in this case, the punishment fits the crime.
“If you look at the fact that it was only 22 years, it really is on one hand, it’s disappointing and if you really think about what she went through, it’s appalling that he even has a chance to get out,” Gagan said.
Although Ms. Doe did not appear in court when Ochoa was sentenced on Tuesday, she did write a statement which a victim’s advocate read at the sentencing:
“I remember fear and anguish and looking back now, I wanted to be free,” she wrote. “So now I am free, I know no one is waiting outside the bathroom for me…you won’t like this but I now go out with friends and have fun & I don’t need you … I hope you learn from what you have done to me.”
“What this guy did to her for that long of a period of time was as horrific as I’ve seen,” DA Wagner told the San Jose Mercury News. “I’m not sure any number is going to satisfy the harm that he did to this person.”
DA Wagner added in an interview: “She’s an extremely courageous and strong woman. She was basically under emotional, physical and psychological abuse her entire childhood. She felt she couldn’t leave, and he would threaten that he would harm her or harm himself if she left.”
Although they obviously knew that something very bad was happening, it is unclear whether Ochoa’s wife and the other children in the house knew the extent of the abuse Ms. Doe was suffering.
The shack where the sexual abuse took place has since been torn down.