A jury is deliberating in the trial for three men charged with gang-raping a 9-year-old girl at a Uintah County home two years ago.
Prosecutors have accused Larson RonDeau, 38, Jerry Flatlip, 31, and Randall Flatlip, 28, of holding down the girl in a Vernal home while each took turns sexually assaulting her, as her mother was in the garage smoking meth. They are each charged with first-degree felony counts of rape of a child and sodomy upon a child.
The men have pleaded not guilty to the charges, and defense attorneys have argued that the sexual assault didn’t happen — and suggested that the girl’s account may have been influenced by her mother.
The five-men, three-women jury deliberated for about three hours on Tuesday before breaking for the day. They are expected to resume their discussions Wednesday morning.
During closing arguments on Tuesday afternoon, Uintah County Attorney G. Mark Thomas told jurors that the girl was telling the truth about what happened to her on March 27, 2016.
“She knew these men for one day,” he argued. “There is no motive for her to make this up.”
But defense attorney Loni DeLand told jurors that the girl had no injuries that would indicate she was sexually assaulted, and there is no DNA evidence that ties the men to the girl or the alleged assault.
Calling the case “underwhelming,” DeLand said prosecutors are relying solely on the account of a young girl — with no physical evidence to back the claim.
“If that’s all you got is a statement of a child and so-called corroboration of the mother, I don’t think you or a reasonable jury can conclude that there is sufficient evidence or proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” DeLand said.
DeLand argued that the girl’s account may have been influenced by her mother, who had dated one of the defendants. The couple had broken up just before the alleged assault, DeLand said, because he had cheated on her.
The girl, who is now 11 years old, told her mother on March 29, 2016, that four men had held her down and raped her two days earlier on Easter Sunday.
The mother later told police that the alleged assault occurred while she left her sleeping daughter on a couch and went to a garage for about 30 minutes to get high on methamphetamine, according to charging documents.
In a video interview played in court last Thursday, the girl told an interviewer with the Children’s Justice Center that the men lifted her from a couch and took her into a bedroom.
“They took me to the back and all four of them did that to me,” the girl says in the video. ” … They said if I tell anybody, they were going to kill me.”
The girl went on to detail the alleged sexual assault at the hands of four men, saying they held down her arms and legs and each raped her. At a later interview with a Uintah Sheriff’s Office detective, the girl identified three of the men — Larson RonDeau, Jerry Flatlip and Randall Flatlip — from a photo lineup.
A fourth man, 22-year-old Josiah RonDeau, was initially charged in connection to the alleged assault, as well, after the girl’s mother identified him as one of the perpetrators in a photo lineup. But prosecutors dismissed the charges in 2016, after the girl’s mother could not be found to testify at a preliminary hearing.
Last week, the girl sat in another room of the Salt Lake City courthouse and testified via video feed. When asked what had happened to her that day, the girl responded, “They raped me,” and gave a similar account to her earlier videotaped interview.
During cross-examination, DeLand focused much of his questioning on what her mother had told her.
Was her mother the first person to use the word “rape”? Yes, the girl responded.
Did you know what that word meant? No, she said.
DeLand also suggested that much of the girl’s account was based on her mother’s line of questioning after she told her about the assault: Did they beat you? the mother had asked the girl. Did they say they would kill you? Each time, the girl said she answered, “Yes.”
And when DeLand asked whether the girl would say or do anything to keep her mother from leaving her — the woman had just completed a stint in jail shortly before the alleged assault — the girl took a long pause and answered, “I don’t know.”
The Tribune generally does not identify victims of sexual assault.
After the alleged assault, the girl was removed from her home and placed in the care of state Child Protective Services. She now lives with extended family in Colorado, she told jurors.
The trial is being held in Salt Lake City after the venue was first moved from Uintah County to Summit County, where in December too few potential jurors answered summons for a trial to go forward.
