The worst of the worst
The high-school dance was supposed to be a night to dress up, catch up with friends after the summer holidays, mark the start of a new school year.
And one teenager – a 16-year-old known only as Jane Doe – woke up particularly excited on 24 October 2009.
A top student, she’d been waiting all summer for the school dance at Richmond High School, California.
Jane pulled out her sparkly, lavender-coloured dress from the wardrobe.
Her dad had bought it especially for the occasion.
Said she was ‘so proud’ to wear it, along with her silver shoes.
Arriving at school, Jane spotted her friends.
‘I’ll pick you up at 11,’ her dad told her, smiling as he watched her running through the school doors.
‘I can’t wait to get my dance on!’ she told a friend.
The party was packed with teens, teachers and former classmates.
But at some point, Jane started to feel hot. She was getting a headache.
Stepping outside for some air, Jane enjoyed a moment of quiet. She wasn’t planning to stay much longer.
As she stood cooling down, Jane was approached by a classmate. He asked if she wanted to come and ‘party’.
In the corner of the courtyard, a group of guys were hanging out, drinking brandy. So Jane followed him and joined the group.
The guys seemed polite
– one even laid his jumper out on the bench before Jane sat down, so her dress wouldn’t get dirty.
They offered her brandy, chatted about music. Jane told them she wouldn’t be staying long as she had church next morning. But the chat took a darker turn. The group asked Jane for sex – grabbing her and pouring alcohol into her. Jane, who’d been sober at the dance, had never had alcohol before, and was soon struggling to stand.
The attack didn’t stop there... The gang yanked up Jane’s sparkly lavender dress. Intoxicated, Jane didn’t stand a chance. She weighed just 7st. Soon, a crowd of around 20 people had gathered, watched as Jane was slapped and kicked. Then some of the men took turns to rape her as she lay unconscious. As she was abused, those looking on chanted, laughed and urged on the attackers.
No-one called the police.
People took photos and videos as Jane was violated. The sick attack went on for two and a half hours.
Hearing about the ongoing attack, a local resident called the police.
The gang fled, leaving Jane unconscious under a picnic table.
But before they left, at 10.52pm, they used Jane’s phone to call her dad.
‘Your daughter is great at sex,’ one of the sick rapists taunted.
Jane’s dad, already on his way to pick her up, prayed it was just a cruel school prank.
He frantically called and texted his daughter’s phone. But when he
arrived at
the school, a caretaker told him everyone from the dance had left.
It was then Jane’s dad saw several police cars whiz by. Approaching an officer, Jane’s dad begged for help, explained his daughter was wearing a lavender dress.
To his horror, the officer already knew his name.
It was then his daughter was taken by on a stretcher, barely recognisable from the smiling girl in the sparkly dress he’d dropped off earlier.
‘We love you very much!’ Jane’s heartbroken dad told her. ‘Hold on!’
But she wasn’t conscious enough to respond. Jane was airlifted to hospital in a critical condition.
The next day, Jane woke up on a trauma ward, in excruciating pain. Her head hurt and she had double vision.
‘I felt very nauseous, as if someone had taken out my insides and stabbed them and put them back in,’ she said.
Jane couldn’t remember anything that happened at the school dance.
But, in the days that followed, after a number of interviews and collection of DNA evidence, the police believed they’d identified some of the perpetrators, and made several arrests.
Over the next four years, there were a series of court hearings and trials.
In September 2012, Manuel Ortega, then
22, said to be the ringleader of the attack, accepted a plea deal to avoid a life sentence.
Ortega admitted a string of charges, including gang rape, in exchange for a 32-year prison sentence.
In a similar deal, Ari Morales, 19, was jailed for 27 years for charges including gang rape.
The following year, Jose Montano, 22, and Marcelles
Peter, 20, were given 33 and 29 years to life respectively, after being convicted of gang rape at trial.
In 2014, Elvis Torrentes, 26, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of sexual penetration of an intoxicated person, and was given six years.
Shortly after,
John Crane Jnr,
47, admitted statutory rape, in exchange for a three-year sentence.
Some justice had been done.
Yet the police still had DNA evidence from suspects in the attack who they had still never been able to identify.
In January 2011, The West Contra Costa Unified School District agreed to pay a $4 million (around £2.9 million) settlement to victim Jane.
But her injuries and trauma were life-long. In the years after, she experienced migraines, had trouble learning.
Her right shoulder and hips would regularly pop out of their sockets.
Now in her late 20s, Jane will no doubt still be haunted by that night. It can only be hoped that, somehow, she has found happiness.
After the horrors this young woman was subjected to, it is surely the very least she
deserves.
She will no doubt still be haunted by that night