Illegal immigrant convicted of raping Henrico foster mother

By: Bill McKelway | Richmond Times-Dispatch
Published: September 23, 2010

A teenage Mexican illegal immigrant was convicted last night of abducting and raping his foster mother in a crime that has turned her and her family away from years of foster care and a trust in people.

“I don’t have it in me emotionally to move over for someone else,” the 55-year-old victim told a Henrico County jury last night.

At the defense table, 18-year-old Arturo Lopez bowed his head as the eight-woman, four-man panel left to deliberate two possible life sentences shortly after 9 p.m.

The jury returned an hour later, recommending a 20-year sentence for the abduction and 10 years more for the rape. Formal sentencing will be Nov. 30.

Lopez was placed with the longtime Henrico foster-care veterans late last November after having been being found homeless and penniless on Richmond streets.

Very little was known about the young man who had been in Richmond only three days.

The victim said she was attacked by a knife-wielding Lopez in the early hours of April 9 this year and ordered to sign an extortion letter that described consensual sex between the woman and the teenager.

On the stand yesterday, Lopez testified he had sex with the woman at her demand on four occasions before what he said was a last rendezvous April 9 between the two in the woman’s living room.

“He said he would kill me and my husband,” the victim testified, stopping often to compose herself.

Lopez cried on the witness stand, speaking of a strange sexual attraction the victim had for him.

A letter the victim said Lopez forced her to sign at knifepoint reads that she would agree to pay him $15,000 for the sexual relationship; it added that Lopez agreed to sex because the woman “was going to speak to my social worker so they would deport me to Mexico.”

Lopez, speaking through an interpreter, said he was happy to find a home and loving family but then was stunned by the woman’s sexual entreaties, telling the jury that he had never had sex before.

But the victim denied those accusations, saying Lopez had become increasingly odd as the weeks passed by, joking about sex and his affection for her. She testified that she mentioned concerns to church people and Lutheran Family Services, which had placed Lopez with the family.

She had planned to ask that Lopez be removed from the family just days before the attack, in which she said she willingly submitted to Lopez to save the life of her sleeping husband.

She dressed herself after the attack and left for work, calling a pastor for help and then police. The family lives north of West Broad Street and Libbie Avenue.

“Either she’s an Oscar-winning actress or she’s telling the truth,” Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Wood told the jurors, speaking of the victim’s emotional testimony.

José Aponté, Lopez’s lawyer, described the young man, 17 when he came to Richmond, as a child who had never known a loving family and whose father, a drunk, had beat him.

But Lopez’s story changed often, the victim said; he told her he had been a drug runner for a Mexican gang and had fled to the United States after a killing.

The victim’s husband fought back tears as he described an end to providing foster care to needy children, a service rewarded by Christmastime reunions with children for whom the couple have cared.