http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01680.html

Witness Tells Court About Gang Rape in MS-13 Trial

By Ruben Castaneda
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 29, 2006; B02



The petite young woman was a 16-year-old Laurel High School student three years ago when she decided to skip classes one day to join two other girls at a party at a Hyattsville apartment.

At the party, she said, Oscar Ramos "Casper" Velasquez took her into a bedroom, where he kissed her and told her that if she didn't have sex with him, as many as 15 other teenagers and young men at the gathering would have sex with her.

When she resisted, two more young men entered the room, the woman told jurors yesterday in federal court. One man threw her on the bed and choked her, the other held down her arms and "Oscar pulled out a gun," she testified.

"He put it to my head, and he said if I didn't shut up, he was going to kill me," the woman told jurors.

Eight men raped her, the 19-year-old woman said. Two assaulted her simultaneously. Outside the room, she said, she heard one man say, "Five minutes each."

The graphic testimony about the May 12, 2003, assault was given in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, where Velasquez, 21, of Baltimore, and Edgard Alberto "Pony" Ayala, 28, of Suitland, are on trial on federal racketeering charges.

They are the first two of 19 alleged members of Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, who are to be tried under the federal RICO law. In an indictment handed up last year, and in two later indictments, federal prosecutors say that the gang conspired to commit murder, rape and other crimes.

The young woman's appearance represented the first direct testimony about violence allegedly committed by MS-13 members. Prosecutors say she is one of two teenage girls sexually assaulted at the Hyattsville party.

During nearly three hours on the witness stand, the woman, a Salvadoran immigrant, maintained her poise as she testified through a translator. She did not appear to look at Velasquez, seated about 20 feet away.

The Washington Post does not identify victims of sexual assault without their consent.

Under direct examination by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sandra Wilkinson, the woman said that after Velasquez threatened her with the gun, another man came in and threatened her with a stick. As she continued to cry and plead to be left alone, yet another man came into the room and said, "I'll go first," she said.

The other four left the room, and the new man raped her, the woman testified.

Outside the room, she could hear teenagers and young men hollering and laughing.

The woman said she tried to get dressed between attacks.

Eventually, 10 men entered the room, but two did not rape her, the woman said. She testified that Velasquez did not sexually assault her.

Some of the attackers used condoms, she said. Eventually, a man came into the room and picked up the used condoms.

Asked by Wilkinson how the assault made her feel, the woman said, "Weak, in pain. Lost. Bad."

The woman said she heard one of the other girls yelling, just before all the men and teenagers in the apartment ran away. The woman said she got dressed and went outside, where she used the cellphone of a neighbor to call 911 and report that she had been raped.

Federal prosecutors also called to the witness stand a Los Angeles police detective who testified about the origins of MS-13 and a court translator who read her translations of letters written by gang members.

MS-13 members live by the motto "We kill, we rape, we control," a federal prosecutor said in her opening statement Tuesday.

Federal prosecutors say that MS-13 committed six homicides and four attempted homicides between April 2003 and June 2005 in suburban Maryland. Eight attacks were in Prince George's, two in Montgomery.

An indictment handed up last week charges that the gang was responsible for a seventh homicide, in Fairfax County in January 2005, when two MS-13 members allegedly fired into a group of youths sitting outside an apartment building. One man was killed, and two juveniles were wounded.

Ayala is accused of driving with fellow gang members to the Fairfax attack.