MANIPULATION

From page A25

the things we were dealing with 10 years ago.”

NIFEAR

ational studies show that up to 70 percent of domestic violence victims recant, go missing or otherwise decline to cooperate with prosecutors.

The main reason is fear. Even from behind bars, perpetrators can threaten or manipulate their victims. The Bexar County Jail, for instance, doesn’t regularly monitor calls made by suspects awaiting trial on family violence charges.

Angelique Christianson, then 38, was constantly harassed by her boyfriend after he was arrested for setting her on fire in May 2019 at her mother’s apartment in Balcones Heights.

She had been dating Bryan Lee Hoover, then 39, for seven months when he poured rubbing alcohol on her and lit it aflame. At the time, Christianson was six months pregnant by a different man. She and the baby survived, but Christianson suffered first-degree burns on her arms and legs.

Hoover was charged with aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury, a first-degree felony. For months while he awaited trial, Hoover called Christianson from jail, even though a judge had signed a no-contact order.

Christianson said that on some days, he called more than 100 times. He insisted he had burned her by accident, she said, and he begged her not to testify, saying: “If you don’t tell them it was an accident, they are going to put me away for life.”

She said Hoover’s persistence had an effect. She still loved him and found it difficult to decide whether to cooperate with prosecutors, she said.

“Part of me feels bad because I know if this case goes to trial, he will go away for a long time,” Christianson said a few months after the assault. “I want to get him help, and he won’t get it there. But I don’t want to be with him, and I don’t want to die.”

In the end, Christianson gave prosecutors a statement, and Hoover pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Christianson moved to Kansas with her son, now 2 years old, and started over.

ANOTHER WAY

n Harris, Tarrant and Travis counties, cases proceed even when a victim recants. In such cases, prosecutors rely on 911 calls, photographs of injuries and other evidence collected by police.

Nationwide, many domestic violence prosecutors have adopted this approach, known as evidencebased prosecution because it doesn’t hinge on the victim’s courtroom testimony.

“We prosecute murders all the time without a live victim testifying,” said Julia Raney Rodriguez, an attorney for Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid who works with domestic violence survivors. “There are lots of ways to prosecute family violence, especially if the police have done a good job.”

Some prosecutors will put an uncooperative victim on the stand, using her very recantation as a sign she’s being manipulated or threatened by her abuser.

A ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004 made it harder for the state to try cases when a victim is unavailable or uncooperative.

But Gael Strack, a former assistant city attorney in San Diego who helped pioneer the use of evidence-based prosecution of family violence in the 1980s, said prosecutors still have effective tools at their disposal when the victim falters.

For example, if prosecutors can show that a defendant more likely than not tried to stop his victim from testifying, he forfeits his right to confront her in court. Victim statements that otherwise would be inadmissible can then be admitted, she said.

“There’s no reason to be dismissing domestic violence cases or offering deferred adjudication,” she said. “High dismissals and deferred adjudication equals a high homicide rate.”

Under a relatively new Texas law, family violence prosecutors can put in evidence the entire history of a relationship, including past violence and the testimony of people who know the couple.

“Like a co-worker who testifies she saw marks on (the victim’s) neck,” said Allenna Bangs, who leads the Felony Intimate Partner

Violence Unit in Tarrant County, home to Fort Worth.

Her boss, District Attorney Sharen Wilson, who took office in 2015, is aggressively pursuing evidence-based prosecution in domestic violence cases.

Over the last 10 years, 90 percent of felony cases in Tarrant ended in a conviction or deferred adjudication, compared with 67 percent in Bexar County.

Some argue that pursuing “victimless” prosecution removes a victim’s right to make decisions about her own life and may put her at greater risk of retaliatory violence.

Bangs responded that the approach has proved its worth.

“It’s never our intention to revictimize a survivor,” she said. “But while we want to empower the survivor to make decisions for her own safety, our duty is to seek justice, and to balance her desire for safety with the safety of the entire community.”

Gonzales said his office pursues domestic violence cases “based on the totality of the crime,” regardless of whether the victim cooperates.

“If we believe the case is righteous, we’re going to go forward,” he said. A missing or uncooperative victim “is not the ultimate deciding factor.”

JEALOUSY AND

CONTROL

Erin Castro warmed any room she walked into. She was a favorite server among the regulars at her family’s restaurant, the Hut Diner on Fredericksburg Road.

She was a freshman at John Marshall High School in Leon Valley when she met Josh Garcia. He was a year older.

At first, she wasn’t romantically interested, but Garcia kept at it. By her sophomore year, they were an item.

The abuse started during her junior year. He’d yell at her. Call her fat, ugly, a whore. He isolated her from family and friends. And he was jealous, intensely so.

“It started small, like, ‘You can’t talk to that guy in your class,’ ” said one of Erin’s high school friends, Saraih Sandoval. “Then it was, ‘Why were you talking to him?’ ”

Erin was close to her older sister, Ashley, and her mother, Rena Castro. Both were bewildered by the changes they saw in her. Her grades dropped. She started pulling away from them.

“It was like he was brainwashing her,” Rena said.

She tried to intervene. On Sept. 13, 2016, after Garcia stole Erin’s backpack so she wouldn’t be able to apply her makeup, Rena called police. Garcia, then 18, was arrested and charged with theft. His bail was set at $800, and he was released within hours.

Rena tried tough love with her daughter, saying she couldn’t live at home and continue seeing Garcia. When that didn’t work, she tried to be maternal and kind to Garcia. She tried talking to his mother.

Nothing worked.

On Oct. 9, 2016, Garcia punched Erin in the face, breaking her nose, while they were in his car. At a stoplight, she tried to get out of the vehicle. Garcia pulled her back inside.

Garcia then sped up and pushed her out of the moving vehicle. He ran over her leg and left her to walk home by herself.

The next morning, Erin couldn’t walk without assistance. Her mother called police and took her daughter to the emergency

room. Garcia was arrested about two weeks later on suspicion of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Bail was set at $50,000. He was released the same day.

Almost a year later, on Sept. 7, 2017, a Bexar County grand jury indicted him on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a felony.

Three months later, Erin submitted an affidavit saying her injuries were all her fault.

“I was heavily intoxicated and being over (sic) dramatic,” she wrote. “Garcia caused me no harm. I willingly opened the car door and jumped out not realizing the mistake I was making. I Erin Castro falsely accused Joshua because he had broken up with me.”

On March 20, 2018, Garcia pleaded no contest to the aggravated assault charge in a plea bargain. The theft charge was dismissed.

Judge Kevin M. O’Connell granted Garcia deferred adjudication, allowing him to avoid a conviction and jail time. The judge placed Garcia on probation for two years, fined him $1,500 and ordered him to submit to regular urine tests and attend an 18-week batterer’s intervention program.

Asked about the case recently, O’Connell said he recalls thinking that Garcia was getting off easy.

“I remember having the thought that the plea bargain in this case was quite lenient for a case of this magnitude,” the judge said. “However, not knowing the specifics of the state’s case and evidence, I was forced to either go along with the plea or bust the plea and risk him walking away completely.”

Henricksen, the DA’s litigation chief, said that in general, prosecutors negotiate deferred adjudication when they have doubts about whether a jury would convict if the

Josh Garcia is serving 35 years for the murder of Erin Castro, 19. He ran her over repeatedly with his Lexus.

case went to trial.

“Domestic violence cases are complicated, which can make cases difficult to win,” he said.

Garcia did not keep up his end of the plea deal. Twice, he submitted diluted urine samples. He did not pay required fees. He dropped out of the batterer’s intervention program.

Nevertheless, prosecutors did not ask the judge to revoke his probation.

Henricksen said the case file sheds no light on why. He said it’s possible probation officers didn’t inform prosecutors of the infractions.

Garcia was not allowed to contact Erin, and for about six months, she was free. From his phone calls, his surveillance, his jealous hectoring.

“She was back to being Erin,” her mother said.

But slowly, he slipped back into her orbit. Sept. 1, 2018, was Erin’s 19th birthday, and she celebrated with a few family members at their diner on Fredericksburg Road.

That night, Garcia showed up as Erin was getting ready to go to a nightclub with friends. Erin agreed to ride to the club with Garcia and a friend. Rena approached Garcia and told him he was carrying “precious cargo.” He assured her Erin would be safe. Rena knew in her gut it was a bad idea, but she allowed her daughter to go.

Shortly after midnight, her phone buzzed. It was Erin, frantic, saying Garcia wouldn’t let her out of his car. Just get out, Rena implored. I’ll come get you.

Erin called again. She was “hysterical,” Rena recalled. Garcia was stabbing her.

Then Rena couldn’t hear anything. She stayed on the line and ran to a neighbor’s house. Quick, call the police! she yelled.

Police found Erin about an hour later. A signal from her cellphone had guided them to her bloodied, bruised body. She had been left beside a deserted stretch of Camp Bullis Road, east of Interstate 10.

A witness told police Garcia assaulted Erin, knocked her to the ground and then got into his silver Lexus sedan and ran her over repeatedly.

Garcia was arrested hours later on suspicion of murder.

Three days after the killing, prosecutors filed a motion to revoke his probation from the 2016 assault — when he’d pushed Erin out of his car and driven over her leg.

Garcia pleaded guilty to murder this year, and Judge O’Connell sentenced him to 35 years in prison. He will be eligible for parole in about 14 years.

Rena said she was dismayed by the sentence at first but has come to terms with it. Still, there are days when she doesn’t want to live anymore. She can’t quite believe her vibrant daughter is gone.

“The house is so quiet without her,” she said.

Rena Castro

has found it hard to carry

on since daughter

Erin was killed by her

boyfriend. “The house is

so quiet without her.”

Carlos Javier

Sanchez / Contributor

Courtesy photo Erin Castro in the ER after boyfriend Josh Garcia pushed her from his car and ran over her leg in 2016. Nearly two years later, Garcia again ran Erin over with a vehicle, this time killing her.