LaredoBuzz.Com

Courtesy Monica Garcia,

 Prosecutors with the Special Victims Unit of the Office of the District Attorney began presenting their case yesterday to a jury in the trial of a San Antonio man accused of beating his girlfriend and forcing her into prostitution.

 Defendant Jose Antonio Martinez of San Antonio is accused of having run away with his fifteen year old girlfriend and bringing her to Laredo.  According the trial testimony, the two were staying at the Loma Alta Motel on San Bernardo Avenue but soon ran out of money, which led the defendant to seek out “Johns” for his girlfriend and force her into prostitution.  The defendant is charged with assaulting his girlfriend by kicking her and beating her with a belt and hammer.  He is also charged with compelling prostitution for allegedly having forced her into having sex with two men. 

 According to yesterday’s testimony, Detective David Buenrostro of the Laredo Police Department was contacted by San Antonio Police about a fifteen year old child that was at San Antonio’s Methodist Hospital seeking treatment for injuries and an alleged rape that the victim reported as having taken place in Laredo. 

 When on the stand, the victim’s mother testified that her daughter began dating the defendant when the child was entering her freshman year of high school and that the relationship soon turned sour as the mother claimed that the defendant began to mistreat her daughter and influence her to run away from home for brief periods of time thus causing the victim’s mother to forbid her daughter from seeing the defendant.  Once the mother had done so, she testified that the two ran away for several months.  The mother testified that she did not see her daughter from early January 2009 until Easter Sunday when she received a frantic phone call from her daughter asking her to drive to Laredo to pick her up.  Upon seeing her daugher, the mother testified, she was shocked at her appearance.  She testified that her daughter appeared thin and pale and that she was covered with bruises.  Upon direct examination by State’s prosecutors, the mother of the victim testified to having seen bruises and cuts on her daughter’s back, legs, arms and face.  Prosecutors then showed the jury photos of the victim depicting her extensive injuries which the State alleges were caused by the beatings she suffered at the hand of the defendant.

 Also testifying yesterday was the SANE (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner) of San Antonio’s Methodist Hospital.  She testified to having met the victim and her parents in the emergency room of the hospital and to having interviewed the victim in which she reported to the nurse that the defendant forced her into prostitution, charging forty dollars to men in exchange for sex with the female child. 

 Prosecutors anticipate putting the victim and the two “Johns” on the stand before the end of the week.