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Wednesday, February 25, 1998
Migrant farm worker an easy target
By ANDREW SCHNEIDER WENATCHEE -- Manuel Hidalgo Rodriguez made an easy target for inclusion on the long list of people accused of raping and molesting children here. The 36-year-old migrant farm worker speaks broken English. With his sweeping mustache, bushy hair and piercing, dark eyes, he is the portrait of an angry man. Angry he is, and with good cause. Until now, no one has been willing to listen to his tale about false accusations and judicial improprieties that led to a 5-1/2-year prison term. He sits in a prison interview room, his hands in steel cuffs shackled to his waist, and Hidalgo tries to sort out what happened to him. "Nothing makes sense. Nothing is the truth. Nothing is fair. Lies, lies and more lies," he says. "And I'm in here and I didn't do anything." Charged April 4, 1995, with two counts of first-degree child rape and two counts of child molestation, Hidalgo was convicted on one count of sexually touching a child. He was one of 43 people in Wenatchee charged with sexually abusing 60 children. Hidalgo's problems started March 13, 1995 -- the day a 10-year-old girl, Donna, told her foster father, police Detective Bob Perez, that she had been repeatedly raped by a man named Manuel. The allegation was complicated by the fact that there had been two different men around Donna's home who were both named Manuel. Donna's older half-sister had lived with one of the two men for a while, but later married Manuel Hidalgo. In his initial police report, Perez indicated Donna was talking about the earlier boyfriend, not Hidalgo. "This was the first Manuel," Perez quoted Donna as saying. On April 17th, Donna's 12-year-old sister, Melinda, told Wenatchee police Sgt. Mike Magnotti and Child Protective Services caseworker Kate Carrow that she, too had been molested. She, however, accused Manuel Hidalgo. As Magnotti prodded for details, Melinda repeated several times: "I don't know. I don't know." In his report, Magnotti wrote that he and Carrow recognized her response, "I don't know" as an indication "that there was more that Melinda had to tell us." In the same police report, the officer said Melinda claimed the attacks started when she was 6 years old. That would have been 1988 -- three years before Hidalgo moved to Wenatchee. Time sheets and statements by employers confirm that Hidalgo was working in California and Nevada during much of the period when police say he was molesting the sisters. Neither Carrow, Magnotti nor Perez would comment for this article. Solely on the strength of Melinda's accusation, Hidalgo was charged. In July, a week before Hidalgo was to go on trial, Donna was questioned again. This time, she said it was Hidalgo who abused her. One day before the trial, two additional charges were filed based on Donna's allegations. Hidalgo's public defender, Edward Stevensen, objected to the last-minute additions, but Chelan County Superior Court Judge Carol Wardell overruled him. The three-day trial began that same day, Aug. 1. From the beginning, the proceedings went against Hidalgo. He and Stevensen fought with one another. "My lawyer only talked to me 20 minutes. He was telling me, 'Plead guilty, guilty, guilty.' He said before the trial that he could get me a deal," Hidalgo says. The deal: plead guilty, serve six months, with credit for time served. "When he told me this, I said, 'Man, get out of here.' I was innocent," Hidalgo says. Connie and Mario Fry, Wenatchee residents who believed the sex-abuse prosecutions were unjust, raised $10,000 to hire Tyler Firkin, an Auburn lawyer, to defend Hidalgo. Judge Wardell, who declined comment for this article, refused to allow the change, and ordered Stevensen to proceed. "Not only does a defendant have a right to counsel, they have a choice of counsel, and I can't think of another court which wouldn't have allowed a change of counsel at that point," Firkin says. "Most public defenders are not bad attorneys, but they just don't have the resources to mount an effective defense. There was lot more that could have been done and should have been done for Manuel." A week after the trial ended, Stevensen joined the staff of Chelan County Prosecutor Gary Riesen, the same man he had faced while defending Hidalgo.
Defense stymiedBy standards of the legal profession, this may have the appearance of impropriety. Court transcripts show, however, that Stevensen, who declined to comment for this article, made a solid effort. He was often stymied by Wardell's rulings.Stevensen's efforts for Hidalgo were hurt when Riesen was allowed to introduce testimony from two Wenatchee doctors whose examinations of Donna and Melinda were said to prove molestation. But the exams had been done years before in connection with other cases. Donna was examined in 1992 to substantiate an earlier rape claim for which another man was convicted. Melinda was checked in 1994, after she accused her parents of molesting her. The exams might indicate the girls had been molested, but how could the reported injuries be attributed to Hidalgo? Wardell also ruled against Stevensen when he challenged testimony from the two girls. While they said Hidalgo molested them separately, the sisters told identical stories, often using the same words, of being molested in the same place and at the same time. Both sisters said the abuse almost always occurred with several people present in the 700-square-foot house they all shared. Stevensen explained to the jury that the sisters had made identical accusations against others in the past. At least eight people were already imprisoned on the girls' testimony. In addition to the girls, Riesen presented an adult witness. Gary Filbeck, 42, testified against Hidalgo to keep himself out of prison. Filbeck, who lived near the girls' family, can neither read nor write and has an IQ of 71. He had been convicted twice on child sex charges -- incest involving his daughter and indecent exposure. The day before Hidalgo was arrested, Perez picked up Filbeck on multiple counts of first-degree child rape involving nine children. Filbeck faced a potential life sentence if convicted of another sex crime, but Riesen offered a deal: Plead guilty to second-degree assault and testify against Hidalgo and others, and there would be no prison time. He took the deal and was ordered into community treatment instead of jail. Filbeck told the jury he had observed and participated in sex abuse with Hidalgo, Donna and Melinda. After deliberating six hours, the jury was deadlocked -- unable to decide on five out of six charges against Hidalgo. They found him guilty of one count of molesting Donna. Ten months after Hidalgo's trial, Melinda admitted she had lied, saying Perez forced her. On June 3, 1996, Melinda told Chelan Country Commissioner Earl Marcellus, Pentecostal church pastor Roby Roberson, Spokane television newsman Tom Grant and Auburn lawyer Robert Van Siclen that Perez knew she had lied about Hidalgo. She said Hidalgo never touched her. Melinda said she "just told Bob what he wanted to hear. I didn't like being pressured, so I just said yes . . . I was forced to say stuff about everyone." "I told him I wasn't molested, and he told me I was lying," she says, repeating a claim made by several children but always strongly denied by Perez. Her recantation is supported by her older brother, Richard, now 17. He says he knows his sisters lied because they told him so -- and because he never saw anything happen in the family's tiny white bungalow. "It was a very small place. If anything like that was going on, you couldn't miss it. And I didn't see it," Richard says. "My sisters were made to lie about other people who molested them, and that's what happened with Manuel. He shouldn't be in prison. He didn't do anything."
New lawyer brings hopeThe case was ripe for an appeal.But again, Hidalgo was frustrated by trying to get his facts presented. The appeal filed by Stevensen's colleague, Thomas Weaver, was turned down May 15, 1997. It mentioned no violations of rights, inconsistencies of fact or Hidalgo's alibis. Instead, it focused solely on a juror who slept during the trial and who was replaced by an alternate. Hidalgo now pins his hopes on the generosity of Wenatchee citizens who have convinced an experienced New York appeals attorney, Robert Rosenthal, to take his case. Even if his conviction is overturned, he may not be able to return to his family. Hidalgo, who was a legal U.S. resident but not a citizen, is fighting post-release deportation because his immigration documents have expired while he has been in custody. Rosenthal and Van Siclen say they will fight that battle next. Almost halfway through his sentence at the Twin Rivers Corrections Center in Monroe, Hidalgo begs for justice. "I am a strong man, but sometimes I cry in this place when I think about what they did to me. I never thought I would see these problems when I came to Wenatchee," he writes in a letter to the Post-Intelligencer. "I told the truth to the judge. I told the truth to the police. I told the truth to every one, but no one cares." INSIDE SEATTLEPI.COM
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