Judge orders trial for accused molester
Alleged victim is the son of MMA champion Cain Velasquez, who tried to shoot defendant
A judge has ruled that a man charged with molesting the child of former mixedmartial arts champion Cain Velasquez will go to trial, giving the court's credence to an accusation that authorities allege prompted Velasquez to shoot at the defendant and his family during a frenzied South County car chase last year.
Harry Eugene Goularte, 44, was charged in February 2022 with one count of lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14; the reported victim has since been publicly identified as Velasquez's then-4-year-old son. A preliminary hearing was held Monday,
after which Judge Javier Alcala decided there is enough evidence to greenlight the case for a jury trial.
“Based on what I heard today, it appears to me based on the testimony that 288(a) has been committed,” Alcala said, referring to the penal code for the criminal charge against Goularte.
The child, now 5, implicated
Goularte in court Monday by marking a stick figure drawing presented to him by Deputy District Attorney Robert Philbrook. He testified, through soft-spoken, short answers, that Goularte touched his genitals in a bathroom at the home-based San Martin daycare run by the defendant's mother.
Velasquez was present in court, and was allowed to remain in the gallery and later, along with his wife, comfort his child on the stand. The judge allowed that in the face of Velasquez being subject to a protective order requiring him to stay away from Goularte and his parents.
Patty Bender, Goularte's mother, testified Monday that her son has long lived at the San Martin property but was seldom in the presence of the children at the daycare, and that any interaction with children was mostly by happenstance. She said in court that only her and a female employee escorted and assisted chil
dren in group visits to the bathroom.
Bender did say that Goularte had less than a handful of interactions with the reported victim, and that one of them was a playful interaction in which the child was punching Goularte and that he picked up the child and jokingly threatened to put him in a garbage can. At a later Halloween party attended by the daycare's students and their parents, Bender stated that Velasquez — in an apparent reference to that previous interaction — picked up Goularte and made the same joking threat to put him in a garbage can.
The timeline of those two separate interactions was not specified, but Bender told the court that Velasquez's child attended the daycare between January 2020 and February 2022, when Goularte was arrested.
When Velasquez's son took the stand, he was clearly frightened by the court environment and was quiet about answering Philbrook's questions. Velasquez and his wife sought to comfort him during the testimony; he was accompanied by stuffed animals on the stand, and was obscured by a piece of cardboard seemingly meant to block his sight of Goularte.
During his cross-examination, defense attorney Steve Defilippis sought to imply that the child's dislike
for Goularte was not from abuse, but because of the instance where Goularte physically picked him up. Defilippis brought up the later Halloween interaction between Goularte and Velasquez to highlight its playful nature.
During that same questioning, the child alleged that in the daycare bathroom, his pants were removed by Goularte. Defilippis' questions to the child appeared to be meant to raise uncertainty about his memory, including asking whether the bathroom door was locked and closed and whether Bender was present. He also asked the child about other claims of Goularte prodding him with a stapler and a pencil, which seemed to have the aim of highlighting the child's confusion
on the stand.
Defilippis drew attention to the fact that none of the other roughly dozen children who attended the daycare disclosed any indication of abuse they either experienced or saw with child-forensic interviewers assisting the criminal investigation. In his closing remarks to the judge, he zeroed in on parts of the child's court testimony, and a video of the initial childforensic interview that was played in court, saying the boy “was all over the place in terms of what he had to say.”
Philbrook asserted that instances where the child went off on tangents — which he said had to be contextualized by his age — that the account of being sexually touched by Goularte was always clear and articulate enough to be credible.
Alcala sided with Philbrook: “Taking into consideration we're dealing with a four- and five-year-old, in my opinion, he was very
good in identifying what is truthful.”
Goularte will remain free on supervised release ahead of the trial. His arraignment on the trial charge is set for March 13.
According to Santa Clara County sheriff's investigators and prosecutors, Velasquez's son told his parents on Feb. 22, 2022 about being molested “on multiple occasions” by Goularte at a home daycare in San Martin operated by Goularte's mother. Michelle Velasquez, the boy's mother, affirmed that account in testimony at Monday's hearing.
Goularte was charged, then arraigned Feb. 25, and a judge granted him supervised release, over objections from the district attorney's office. Three days later, investigators say Goularte's mother and stepfather drove from San Martin to Morgan Hill to pick him up and take him to San Jose to get outfitted for an ankle monitor. Authorities allege that Velasquez followed the parents and that
once they picked up Goularte, he drove up to their vehicle and fired a handgun at Goularte, then followed them as they drove away.
The pursuit ended near Monterey Highway and Bailey Road on the southern edges of San Jose, where Velasquez reportedly fired several shots at the truck, wounding Goularte's stepfather. Velasquez was arrested a short distance away by San Jose police.
Velasquez was charged with attempted murder and multiple assault and gun charges, and his case was sent to trial after a two-day preliminary hearing. The judge who oversaw the hearing granted Velasquez $1 million bail and a series of monitoring requirements, as well as a stay-away order for Goularte and his parents.
Concerns about safety and security from Velasquez and his supporters prompted Goularte's attorney to tell a court that Goularte and his parents had gone into hiding.