Charge of Gang Rape Shocks Tightly Knit Texas Town

SAN DIEGO, Tex. —  This languid little town in the heart of South Texas is like many across America where everyone knows everyone else’s business. And that has made the trouble all the harder to take.

Settled 136 years ago along what is now San Diego Creek, the town of 5,200 people has survived hard times and a legacy of political corruption. Now it has again unexpectedly achieved a measure of national notoriety.

A 19-year-old mother of two here has charged that four men accosted her on a dark street on March 26, forced her into a car and took her to a remote area north of town, where she was repeatedly raped by members of the drunken crowd at an illegal cockfight. In all, 10 men and one juvenile have been arrested in the assault. The cockfight was reportedly attended by as many as 30 people.

‘More and More Names’

Although most townspeople know who she is, the victim has not been publicly identified. Jerry Galvan, an investigator for the district attorney’s office, interviewed her hours after the alleged attack.

“At first I thought it was only one guy. But then more and more names kept being called out. I was just shocked,” Galvan said.

Two national broadcast networks quickly picked up the story. The incident immediately was compared to one in New Bedford, Mass., where six men in 1983 raped a woman on a pool table in a bar while other patrons cheered them on.

“This is a very publicized case and it was bound to be compared to the New Bedford incident,” said Rodolfo V. Gutierrez, the deputy district attorney who will be the prosecutor. He said one of the chief witnesses is a 12-year-old boy who was attending the cockfight and who told investigators that, although the woman repeatedly screamed for help, those around her did nothing to assist her.

Grief and Bewilderment

In a town where many people are related in some way to one of the 11 accused of the crime, the charges of gang rape have brought grief and bewilderment.

“This is a community where everyone knows everyone, where everyone helps each other,” said Ruperto Canales, the high school basketball coach who also served 10 years as mayor. “Everyone is related here. This is really a big shock.”

San Diego, an oil-field and ranching community, was settled by Mexican immigrants in 1852. Though perhaps 99% of its residents are of Mexican heritage, most are fifth- or sixth-generation Americans and many families have lived here for at least a century.

San Diego’s section of the regional telephone directory occupies 3 1/2 pages. More telling, 215 of the names in the San Diego directory are Garcia, Perez, or Gonzalez, representing the three most prominent families in town.

“This really hurts the town,” said Alejo Garcia, a county commissioner. “Most of the people in this town are good people and this incident shouldn’t reflect on this town.”

Newspaper Assails Cockfight

The Corpus Christi Caller-Times, the largest newspaper in the region, published front-page stories about the incident for three days. And in an editorial on Easter Sunday, the newspaper contended that the illegal cockfight had contributed to the attack on the woman because “cockfighting creates an environment in which the most bestial acts can take place.”

Angered by the notoriety the incident has brought to San Diego, the town’s 18-month-old newspaper replied on its front page this week. “In a sense, the national and area news media have raped this town in a fashion not too unsimilar to the gang rape itself,” the newspaper charged.

Gutierrez, the deputy district attorney, is convinced that, despite the close ties of the townspeople, an impartial jury can be selected in the county. He also said he believes that drugs, as well as the unruly atmosphere at the cockfight, may have played a part in the assault.

“There was alcohol, possibly drugs, involved. It didn’t help that there was this many people already involved in something illegal,” Gutierrez said.

Political Notoriety

For most of the century, San Diego was notorious principally for the way it conducted its politics.

In 1948, longtime political boss George B. Parr used the names of 200 deceased voters to give Lyndon B. Johnson a 113-vote victory for the U.S. Senate.

Parr later went to prison for tax evasion, was pardoned by President Harry S. Truman, and returned to Duval County and ruled another three decades. He committed suicide in 1975, ending the political machine that his father, Archer, had forged more than 60 years before. Since his death, elective democracy has generally thrived in Duval County and the outcome of most elections is no longer a foregone conclusion.

Duval County, where unemployment exceeds 20%, is used to bad news and bad publicity. For Ernesto Molina Jr., the county’s tax appraiser, the gang rape incident reflects the conditions of an area that arguably are among the worst in the country.

“The majority of those accused are unemployed and come from economically deprived backgrounds,” he said. “They don’t see beyond a day-to-day existence.

‘Can’t Point the Finger’

“The rape could have happened anywhere. And you can’t point the finger at the cockfight. You have to take a deeper look into the backgrounds of the victim and the assailants and at what society has done in the last 30 years to change things around here,” Molina said.

Many of San Diego’s residents still live in ramshackle huts or badly deteriorating frame houses. Remove late-model cars from some of the gravel streets and driveways, and the neighborhoods could pass for rural slums in the 1950s.

Gutierrez said he expected defense attorneys to base their defense on the suggestion that the woman consented to have sex with the men. The victim and her husband left town for a few days, seeking refuge at a family ranch 20 miles south of San Diego. But they still must reside next door to the family of one of the accused.

Aurora Canales, wife of the former mayor and operator of a convenience store, said she was heartbroken to see the victim and her husband enter her store upon their return to town.

“I feel just a big letdown. I’m so sad and shocked. But I’m very angry too. Why did they have to do that to that poor girl? Nobody deserves that,” she said.

Canales, the former mayor who taught school to most of the suspects, says he asks himself: “Where did we go wrong teaching them the difference between right from wrong?”

“We’re going to have to carry a cross for the rest of our lives,” Canales said. “Every time we go somewhere else, someone will remind us of this incident. That’s all they will ever know about San Diego.”