Pregnant teen fled brother with male companion, police say. By CORY SCHOUTEN New York Times Regional Newspapers
BRADENTON -- A girl who authorities initially said was abducted from a Bradenton motel apparently ran away with a man she was involved with sexually to escape a physically abusive brother.
Authorities estimate the girl is 15, not 12 as initially reported. She is also two months pregnant, and authorities say the man they first identified as her abductor is probably the father of her unborn child.
The State Attorney's Office in Bradenton said Friday it will not file charges against Antonio Paulino-Perez, who took the girl with him to South Carolina late last month, triggering an Amber Alert and nationwide search.
"It turns out these people knew each other, lived with each other at one time and had a sexual relationship," said Ed Brodsky, assistant state attorney in Bradenton. "It wasn't an abduction; it was her running away with him."
The U.S. Attorney's Office and South Carolina officials also have decided not to press charges, Brodsky said.
But Hillsborough County officials are looking into the pair's sexual relationship while they lived together at a migrant farm in Ruskin, he said.
Authorities said the couple never had sex in Manatee County but did have sex in South Carolina. Still, filing charges would be difficult as no proof has been found of the girl's age, Brodsky said.
Mexico has no record of her birth, and the girl doesn't know her own age or birth date, but a physician estimated she's 15. The girl's name is being withheld to protect her privacy.
The girl, a Mixtec Indian, was reunited with her family in rural Mexico last week.
Paulino-Perez, 25, is being held at the Manatee County jail at the request of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Sheriff's Office spokesman Dave Bristow. Paulino-Perez and the girl were in the U.S. illegally.
According to the State Attorney's Office in Bradenton:
The girl lived in Manatee County for a week and stayed at the Classic Inn on 14th Street West in Bradenton with her brother and another man.
On April 24, she got into a fight with her brother, who physically abused her regularly. He threatened her with a knife and cut her hand. She left the hotel and went to a nearby convenience store, where she ran into Paulino-Perez.
She told him she didn't want to return to the hotel, so he offered to let her tag along as he and a friend headed out of state. Apparently, she told no one she was leaving.
A few days later, the girl and Paulino-Perez were found at a Wal-Mart store in South Carolina. Paulino-Perez was arrested on a preliminary charge of interfering with parental custody and held on $500,000 bail.
The State Attorney's Office announced Friday that it won't pursue the charge, giving two reasons: The girl was removed from an abusive situation, and she left willingly.
For law enforcement, it was a difficult case from the beginning. Besides a language barrier, authorities received conflicting statements from Bracisco and Rufino Aguilar, who were living at the motel with the girl. Both claimed to be her brothers.
On April 26, the men told police they last saw her at 7:30 p.m. April 25. Police had arrived at the motel for another call that night, and the men didn't report that she was missing.
They later told investigators they were "too intoxicated and could not remember" to tell police their sister was gone, according to a police statement.
Police were skeptical of their stories from the beginning and eventually concluded that only one of the men is related to the girl.
Early on, police also were led to believe Paulino-Perez and the girl did not know each other. That was one reason they feared the girl could be in danger. But relatives and co-workers at Yu An farm in Ruskin later said Paulino-Perez had been courting the girl for several months.
Cory Schouten is a reporter for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
