Testimony begins against Aston man in sexual abuse
MEDIA COURTHOUSE » A 42-year-old Aston man accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting a young girl over the course of a decade is facing 19 counts in a bench trial before Court of Common Pleas Judge G. Michael Green this week.
Manuel Molina, of the 1100 block of Washington Avenue, is charged with rape of a child, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child, aggravated indecent assault and child pornography, among other offenses.
The judge heard from the alleged victim, now 19, who said the assaults began when she was in kindergarten. She told Assistant District Attorney Kristen
Kemp that her first memory of being sexually assaulted was when she was 5 or 6 years old.
Molina, represented by defense attorney Chuck Peruto, continued to assault her similarly in more than 10 instances over the years, the alleged victim said.
He would use small sex toys or markers that he had sometimes gutted and fitted with electronics, the woman testified.
The alleged victim said she discovered one of those markers in the last couple of months. She identified the marker in court as one that had been used on her.
Molina also allegedly forced her to pose and assisted her in posing sexually for pictures so that it “looked right,” but noted he was careful not to ever capture her face.
He would sometimes show her these pictures and adult pornography, as well as pictures of himself posing nude, she said.
“Sometimes it would be different ones, but sometimes it was one that he was proud of,” she said of the pictures Molina allegedly took of himself.
The alleged victim said Molina rarely talked about the abuse, but she was scared when he did because he told her he would hurt her mother.
The alleged assaults eventually escalated, she said, into intercourse “weekly, sometimes daily.”
Molina would allegedly exaggerate the pain he was experiencing from lack of sex, the woman testified, and asked to have sex with her to alleviate the pain.
“(Afterward) he would say how much of a bad person he is,” she said. “It was kind of like a panicky … I don’t know if it would be whimpering or crying, but there were no tears.”
She said she would comfort him in these moments, telling him it was fine even though she knew it was not.
The alleged victim said the assaults stopped when she was about 15 or 16 years old.
She finally disclosed the abuse and filed a police report in August 2020. Criminal Investigation Division Computer Forensics Examiner Liubov Belskaya testified that she examined 24 items seized from Molina’s home in September 2020, including various computers, thumb drives, hard drives, DVDs, tablets and cellphones.
She said she had uncovered screenshots of text messages that showed Molina may have been alerted
that charges were coming on Aug. 30, 2020. Those messages began at 6:56 p.m., Belskaya said.
Between 7:28 and 7:43 p.m., Belskaya said a custom-built computer tower taken from Molina’s home showed multiple hard drives had been plugged into it, and evidence from those drives showed some information had been deleted.
But as Belskaya explained, “deleted” does not mean gone unless the information is overwritten or wiped, so she was able to access a pornographic video of a young female taken in a bathroom on one hard drive.
The alleged victim identified herself in that video and said that Molina’s voice could be heard as he shot the video.
“It was him,” she testified.
Belskaya said data from the video showed it had come from an encrypted Samsung file and that it was shot Sept. 16, 2017, when the alleged victim would have been 13 years old, and was deleted at 7:33 p.m. Aug. 30, 2020.
Another image found on a separate drive showed the girl wearing the same shirt from the video in a non-pornographic image, according to Belskaya. The alleged victim also identified the shirt as “her favorite” from that time period.
The trial is expected to continue today.