Published: May 03, 2008 04:44 pm            

Child abuse trial

Sentencing: Jury takes break for weekend, resumes Monday

San Marcos — Cesar Mojica is the one on trial, but the case has always been about his three children, who were covered with wounds and scars, unable to walk and suffering from severe malnutrition when taken from their parents' care around 18 months ago.

Prosecutors drove that point home to the jury anew on Friday in the sentencing portion of his injury to a child trial.

On Thursday, jurors convicted Mojica on the highest level available to them on all 14 counts of child abuse and by their verdict said he had knowingly inflicted the injuries, which makes each conviction a first-degree felony punishable by from 5 to 99 years in prison.

Witnesses on the stand Friday included the childrens’ foster mother and the owner-operator of Consolidated Rehabilitation Therapies, where Mojica’s daughter Angel and twins Amber and Cesar Jr. have been receiving treatment.

Also testifying Friday were two law enforcement officers who had made calls to the Dripping Springs mobile home where Mojica, his wife Sarah Amaya and children lived. Lt. Mark Cumberland and Deputy Ryan Gonzales, both of the Hays County Sheriff’s Office, said they had answered calls at the home prior to the discovery of the abuse but had been unaware there were any children living there.

Gonzales testified he was called to the home after neighbors complained of loud music six times in 2004 through 2006 but never saw the children and never heard them.

Cumberland, who arrested Mojica for hitting Amaya in the face in July 2004, said he only became aware the children existed because he asked as part of a determination whether to charge Mojica with simple assault or family violence.

Terry Curtis, the foster mother, said all three children still display behaviors that stem from the time they were being abused. Angel, who is now almost five, and the twins, now four, still have nightmares, she said, as well as other emotional and physical disabilities.

Angel, she said, “shuts down” by simply standing and staring “if she feels uncomfortable or is unsure of the outcome” of a situation at home or elsewhere. She also frames requests in negative terms, Curtis said. “She’ll say ‘Mommy I can’t have a drink,’ when actually she’s trying to say she wants one.”

None of the children ask about their biological parents, and Cesar even pronounces his name differently than his father.

The twins remain afraid of the dark and both of them, because malnutrition stunted their growth, “are going to be made fun of because they are small and not able to do the things other kids do,” Curtis said on the stand.

Curtis and her husband are also foster parents for the children’s younger brother Blake, who was born while his mother was in custody. She said they are in the process of adopting all four children; which is possible because in a civil case, both Mojica and Amaya were stripped of their parental rights.

The scars on the children’s hands and faces draw attention when the family goes out in public, Curtis said. “Their physical appearance will remind them each day of what happened.”

Raylene Bell of Consolidated Rehabilitation Therapies testified that the children began receiving intensive therapy right after being seized by Child Protective Services. “I think the children could benefit from all the therapy they could receive,” she said.

All three are still undergoing speech and physical therapy and the twins are still receiving occupation al and physical therapy.

To this day, Bell said, Amber cannot run and neither she nor Cesar can climb steps in a normal manner. The children will find it difficult interacting on the playground, for example, “participating in sports, even getting on and off a school bus would be difficult.”

Other testimony on Friday included law enforcement officers and a DPS lab technician who testified that a white powdery substance found in a baggy in Mojica’s bedroom was cocaine.

Defense attorneys Will Holgate and Tamara Needles waived cross-examination on most of Friday’s witnesses; though Needles did tell Curtis “God bless you for what you are doing for those children.”

Testimony in the sentencing phase will continue on Monday, when prosecutors say they will call witnesses to testify about Mojica’s behavior in Hays County Jail as well as possible gang connections dating to the time he lived in Illinois as a teenager.

Amaya, who invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, remains in Hays County Jail awaiting trial.

        

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