BOISE, Idaho — Five years after a Boise man allegedly fled accusations of sexually abusing two girls, one of whom he was related to, he sat in a courtroom Tuesday and listened to their testimonies.
The Idaho Press reports the case, which names Gilberto Roman-Lopez, 47, as a defendant, has its origins even further back than that, however. He’s accused of inappropriately touching his female relative and her best friend numerous times for years, between 2005 and 2010. Prosecutors didn’t file charges until 2014, because both girls largely kept their stories to themselves until the fall of that year.
As the investigation got underway, Roman-Lopez fled, prosecutors say. They moved forward with the case, though, securing an indictment in January 2015. Police in Lakewood, Colorado, just south of Denver, arrested Roman-Lopez earlier this year on the Idaho warrant. He faces three counts of lewd conduct with a child younger than 16 years old, and two counts of sexual abuse of a child younger than 16 years old.
In court on Tuesday, both of the case’s victims — now women in their early 20s — described what they experienced nearly a decade-and-a-half ago.
One of them, the older of the two, lived with Roman-Lopez and was related to him. The other girl was about a year-and-a-half her junior, and a year behind her in school. They lived across the street from one another in their west Boise neighborhood and were best friends, they both said in court. They spent a great deal of time together, and sometimes the younger girl would eat dinner at Roman-Lopez’s home.
They also watched movies and TV together, and it was during those times, that the younger of the two women remembered Roman-Lopez would touch her inappropriately. If they were watching TV in the family’s living room, she said in court, he would say he was cold, put a blanket over himself and her, and then touch her inappropriately beneath it. If they watched TV in a bedroom, she said in court, he would lay with her on the bed and touch her inappropriately there as well.
When Monica Gray, Roman-Lopez’s attorney, asked the woman how many times the man had touched her, she said she couldn’t remember. Gray asked her if it was because the incidents occurred so long ago.
“Because it happened so many times, I can’t even count how many times it happened,” the woman replied.
She remained silent about the incidents — never talking about them even with her best friend.
The older girl, however, did try to tell her mother, who lived in the home with her and Roman-Lopez, about one time he touched her inappropriately, she said.
“He told (my mother) that it was an accident and I was too scared to say anything, so I told her it was an accident because I didn’t know,” the woman said through her tears in court.
In 2012, the younger girl’s family moved to Meridian, and the two friends lost touch with one another.
It wasn’t until 2014 — just before her 15th birthday, as a freshman in high school — the younger girl told a friend about the incidents, which by that point had occurred about eight years before. Until she told her friend, she said, she didn’t understand the gravity of what had happened to her.
She told her mother soon after that, who then reported the incidents to the police. The police, in turn, interviewed Roman-Lopez, and according to John Dinger, the case’s prosecutor, he corroborated much of what the girl disclosed — although he blamed some of the touching on the girl. He wasn’t arrested, though, and later the case’s other victim overheard Roman-Lopez discussing the accusations with his wife.
“When she pieced together that there had been some allegations, she had finally had enough,” Dinger told the jury during his opening statements. “And it just kind of erupted out of her — she said, ‘You did this to me as well.’”
The girl’s mother took her from the house and they stayed elsewhere for the night. When they returned, on Sept. 29, 2014, Roman-Lopez was gone. The case stalled and was then listed as inactive, as police couldn’t find him until March, in Colorado.
Gray, Roman-Lopez’s attorney, emphasized in her opening statement the case against Roman-Lopez doesn’t include much more than the allegations.
“Ladies and gentlemen, what you will hear in this case is only words,” Gray said. “No scientific proof. No physical facts.”
The trial is expected to last two days, but attorneys were uncertain Tuesday if they would finish presenting evidence on Wednesday or Thursday.
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