Rape charges dropped in case: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/pub...c2387b041c
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In court on Friday, prosecutors said they will drop the sex assault case against Jose Montano, 17. On Thursday evening, they told a lawyer for Henry Sanchez Milian, 18, that they would also drop his sex assault case, according the lawyer, Andrew Jezic.
The judge ordered Montano released from custody on Friday.
Defense lawyers for both defendants have said the sex acts were consensual and that text messages and school surveillance videos did not substantiate the girl’s claims she had been pushed from a hallway into a bathroom at Rockville High School on March 16 where the suspects took turns assaulting her in a stall as she tried to break free.
Prosecutors declined to comment before the hearing about the decision in the case that rocked the suburban community near Washington, D.C. But they had signaled in an early court proceeding that they were having challenges corroborating events the girl described to Montgomery County Police detectives and that led to the arrests of Sanchez Milian and Montano.
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On March 16, they had been called to the school after the 14-year-old girl told a staff member she’d been raped. The detectives spoke to the girl, who according to their affidavits, told them she knew Montano, and they had been talking in a school hallway that morning.
She said he asked to have sex and when she refused, pushed her into a boys’ bathroom and pulled her into a stall, according to the police affidavits. Sanchez Milian then entered the stall, according to girl’s account in the affidavit, and both raped her as she cried out and told them to stop.
Montano “denied having any sexual contact with [the victim]. Montano stated they went into the bathroom to tell jokes,” detectives wrote after talking with him.
They also spoke with Sanchez Milian who “initially stated nothing happened,” the police affidavits state, “then changed his statement multiple times and admitted having sex with the victim with his friend Montano.”
Faced with the choice of filing charges, or not arresting the suspects as an investigation continued, the police brought charges. Hours later, the two teens were locked in the Montgomery County Detention Center.
Prosecutors took over the case and as they reviewed text messages, found there may have been an agreement between Montano and the girl that they would have sex. They also looked into whether Montano and Sanchez Milian — in text messages — had plotted to turn the planned encounter into a rape.
At a court hearing March 30 over setting bond, Assistant State’s Attorney Mary Herdman told a judge evidence was being discovered daily — some of it bolstering the accusations and some not. At that point of the investigation, though, she said text messages between the suspects showed they had at a minimum planned to commit a crime.