TRANSCRIPT: She says her involvement grew from a police ride-along.
By David Herrman, The Press-Enterprise
A 13-year-old girl who contends she was molested by a Palm Springs police officer said the first improper contact took place in the defendant’s patrol car, according to a transcript of the teen’s testimony released Friday.
The transcript from Monday’s preliminary hearing relates in sometimes-graphic detail the eighth-grader’s story of a sexual relationship with Robert Chavez, a family friend, that started in September with a French kiss in his patrol car.
By January, the girl testified, the relationship with Chavez had grown to include sexual contact in her home and his.
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The sexual contact stopped in early February, the girl testified, after her mother discovered a note from Chavez in a pocket while doing laundry.
Chavez’s attorney, Mark Sullivan, could not be reached for comment Friday. An assistant at his Palm Springs office said he was out of town. Chavez has consistently declined to comment on the case.
The 35-year-old La Quinta man has been charged with six felony counts of committing lewd acts on a child. Three of those counts include special allegations of substantial sexual contact. Authorities do not believe sexual intercourse took place. If Chavez is convicted on all charges, he could be sentenced to as long as 18 years in state prison.
Chavez worked as a police officer in neighboring Cathedral City before joining the Palm Springs department as a patrol officer four years ago. He has been relieved of duty and placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the trial. His next scheduled court appearance is an April 5 arraignment.
In response to a motion from Deputy District Attorney Kirsten Seebart, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Richard A. Erwood barred the public from the courtroom Monday while the teen was on the witness stand. Seebart had suggested that the girl could face psychological harm if she was forced to testify in open court
A court reporter’s transcript of the hearing was released Friday.
Family friend
In the transcript, the girl describes Chavez as a family friend who would drink beer in the garage with her father.
She testified that Chavez and his wife would come over for family dinners and that they had joined her family on several trips in recent years.
According to the transcript, the girl testified that she started to develop a “crush” on the man she knew as “Rob” last summer. It was a feeling, according to her testimony, that she believed was shared by Chavez.
On Sept. 20, the girl said she went on a ride-along with Chavez at her mother’s suggestion as part of a job-shadowing project for school. Members of the public are allowed to ride with police officers as they patrol.
She testified that during the ride-along, which lasted the police officer’s entire Saturday-night shift, Chavez hugged her and rested his hand on her thigh.
On the way back to the La Quinta neighborhood where they both lived, the girl testified that Chavez stopped his patrol car at a park near La Quinta High School. There, she testified, he French kissed her before dropping her at home about 3 a.m. and telling her that he’d “had fun tonight.”
The same thing took place three times during a second ride-along a week later, the girl testified.
Juveniles on ride-alongs
Palm Springs Police Chief Gary Jeandron said his department allows officers to take juveniles on ride-alongs as long as the parents have signed a consent form.
“We had waivers signed by the parents in this case,” he said.
Jeandron said the department was reviewing its ride-along policy before the allegations against Chavez came to light. He said a proposed new policy features a more detailed release form and could include an age limit, although he expressed concern that such a restriction could prevent intervention work that police do with troubled teens.
That work, he said, sometimes includes a ride-along at parents’ request to show a troubled youth what his or her life would be like out on the streets.
“We don’t want to have a blanket statement saying no one under 16 can participate,” Jeandron said.
Jeandron said Chavez must be considered innocent until proven guilty. He objected to the idea there was something wrong with a 13-year-old girl going on an unsupervised late-night ride-along with a male police officer.
“She was supervised by a very trusted community member, and that’s what makes this so egregious,” he said. “Who better to put in a car with your 13-year-old than a police officer?”
Secret kisses
Through the months after the ride-along, the girl testified, she and Chavez sneaked secret kisses between more intense sexual encounters at the house Chavez shared with his then-pregnant wife and at the girl’s home while her parents were at work and her younger brother was in another room.
The girl testified that she considered Chavez her “boyfriend” and related how he had told her that he never loved his wife, had never really wanted to marry her and that they were going to get a divorce after the baby was born.