ROCKVILLE, Md. -- Prosecutors are dropping charges against two Hispanic teens accused of raping a 14-year-old girl in a restroom at a suburban Washington high school, a case cited by the White House as an example of why the president wants to crack down on illegal immigration.
Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy said at a Friday news conference that the rape and sex offense charges were being dropped after a "painstaking investigation" of the girl's claim that the two teens raped her in the restroom at Rockville High School.
Defense attorneys said the sex was consensual. They pointed to text messages in which the girl agreed to a sexual encounter; an explicit video the girl sent one of the teens; and security camera footage, which they said shows the girl running to meet one of the teens and willingly entering the restroom with him.
McCarthy said the girl was interviewed multiple times and the investigation revealed a "lack of corroboration and substantial inconsistencies."
"The original charges cannot be sustained, and prosecution is untenable on those charges," McCarthy said. He refused to answer any questions after reading a statement.
While dropping the rape charges, prosecutors brought child-pornography charges against the two male teens. McCarthy said Henry Sanchez, 18, will be charged with possession of child pornography, which carries a potential sentence of up to five years.
He declined to say what charges the 17-year-old would face, because that case has been transferred to juvenile court. But the younger teen's lawyers said the boy would face charges of distributing and possessing child pornography. They said the charges carry a possible sentence of 10 years or more.
The Associated Press does not typically identify minors charged with crimes and is not naming the 17-year-old now that he is charged as a minor.
Defense lawyer Maria Mena said the pornography charges stem from the video the 14-year-old girl sent to the 17-year-old, which he then shared with Sanchez. She called it "egregious" that her client was being charged while the girl who made the video and sent it to him is not being charged. The purpose of the child-pornography statute, she said, is to deter adults from engaging in predatory conduct against kids, not to criminalize sexting between two minors.
Another defense attorney, David Wooten, said the primary reason they were able to prove the 17-year-old's innocence was by producing the evidence of explicit text messages and the video that the girl had sent.
"Those very text messages and images that vindicated him are now being used against him," he said.
The 17-year-old came to the U.S. from El Salvador to live with relatives who are U.S. citizens after his adoptive grandmother died in El Salvador, leaving him alone there, his lawyers said. Mena said Friday that immigration proceedings have been initiated against him, but the lawyers will fight to keep him in the country.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the 18-year-old was stopped by a Border Patrol agent in Texas last year after arriving from Guatemala and that an immigration detainer had been placed on him.
After the initial charges were filed in March, White House spokesman Sean Spicer, in response to a reporter's question, called the allegations shocking and disturbing, saying, "Part of the reason that the president has made illegal immigration and crackdown such a big deal is because of tragedies like this."
The school district later became the subject of anti-immigration protests and counterprotests. Officials said they were besieged by hundreds of racist and xenophobic calls and comments and had to increase security.
At Friday's White House briefing, spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked whether the White House unfairly jumped to conclusions in the case. She said Spicer "was speaking about what he knew at the time."
A Section on 05/06/2017