Thread: VA: Illegal immigrant found guilty of raping foster mother

Illegal immigrant found guilty of raping foster mother

Arturo Lopez, 18, was found guilty of rape and abduction of his foster mother. He was 17 at the time of the attack.
By Bill Mckelway | TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Published: September 22, 2010


An illegal Mexican immigrant teenager, taken in by a Henrico County couple last winter, was convicted Wednesday night of abducting and raping his foster mother in a crime that has turned the family away from years of foster care and trust in people.

"I don't have it in me emotionally to move over for someone else," the 55-year-old victim told a jury of eight women and four men prior to sentencing, as family members looked on in tears.

The jury returned before 10 p.m. and recommended a 20-year sentence on the abduction and 10 years on the rape. Formal sentencing will be in November.

At the defense table, 18-year-old Arturo Lopez bowed his head as the jury left to deliberate two possible life sentences shortly after 9 p.m.

Lopez was placed with the longtime Henrico County foster-care veterans late last November after having been found homeless and penniless on Richmond streets.

Very little was known about the young man who had been in Richmond only three days and told authorities he had been on his own in Mexico since 10 years of age before catching a bus to Richmond after he illegally crossed the border.

The victim said she was attacked by a knife-wielding Lopez in the early-morning hours of April 9 this year and ordered to sign a bizarre extortion letter that described consensual sex between the teenager and the aging woman, who outweighs the taller youth by at least 75 pounds.

On the stand Wednesday, Lopez testified to having sex with the woman at her demand on four occasions before what he said was a last rendezvous between the two in the woman's living room.

"He said he would kill me and my husband," the victim testified, stopping often to compose herself.

Lopez -- boyish, thin, and able to speak almost no English -- cried on the witness stand, speaking of a strange sexual attraction the victim had for him and her threats to deport him if he didn't engage in sex.

But the victim said Lopez had become increasingly odd as the weeks passed by, joking about sex and his affection for her. She testified that she mentioned concerns to church people and Lutheran Family Services, which had placed Lopez with the family.

She said she had planned to ask that Lopez be removed from the family just days before the attack, in which she said she willingly submitted to Lopez to save the life of her sleeping husband.

She dressed herself after the attack and left for work, calling a pastor for help and then police when she was safely away from the family home, which is generally north of West Broad Street and Staples Mill Road.

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Foster mother's rapist gets 30 years

By Bill McKelway | TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Published: December 02, 2010

Henrico, Va. --
A homeless immigrant who was taken in by a Henrico County family and then convicted of raping his foster mother will serve 30 years in prison, a judge has ruled.

"He's just beginning to realize the severity of what has happened to him, and he feels helpless," defense lawyer Jose E. Aponte said of his client yesterday.

In a brief hearing that left 18-year-old Arturo F. Lopez in tears Tuesday and that resulted in a prison sentence consistent with a jury's recommendation in September, Judge Daniel T. Balfour of Henrico Circuit Court imposed a 50-year sentence, suspending 20 of those years.

Sentencing guidelines ranged from nine years and 10 months to a high of 21 years and one month on convictions for abduction and rape.

"There's no way," Aponte said when asked if Lopez, who entered the country illegally in November 2009, could be deported back to Mexico rather than serve out his full sentence in prison.

Lopez was placed with a long-established foster-parenting couple in Henrico a year ago after Richmond authorities found him wandering the streets homeless. Lopez testified that he had been on his own in Mexico since he was 10 and entered the United States illegally.

He took a bus to Richmond just three days before social-services workers picked him up off the streets, he said.

Five days after his 18th birthday, according to the 55-year-old victim in the case, Lopez threatened her with a knife and raped her in the living room as her husband slept upstairs. In emotional testimony before a jury of eight women and four men, the grandmother said she submitted to Lopez because she feared for her and her husband's lives.

She was allowed to leave for work after the April 9 incident and called police and a pastor. The victim's daughters left some jurors near tears describing the damage the attack did to their mother's emotions and sense of happiness.

Lopez, though, speaking through an interpreter at trial, said the woman begged to have sex with him and threatened to deport him if he refused. On the morning of the April 9 attack, Lopez had the woman sign a crude letter stating that sex between the two was consensual.

Henrico Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Robert M. Wood urged Balfour to follow the jury's lead in sentencing Lopez; at trial he told jurors that Lopez had all but destroyed a family that had dedicated much of their lives to helping struggling children.

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