Molester receives over six years

By Jim Maniaci and Jim Tiffin
Cibola County Bureau

GRANTS — Bennie Chavez, 71, a former Grants Parks and Recreation Department employee, was sentenced Friday to six-and-a-half years in state prison in the criminal case where he was convicted in July 2005 of 43 counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor.

Thirteenth Judicial District Judge Camille Martinez-Olguin sentenced Chavez including an order that he receive treatment as a sex offender while in prison, that he receive proper medical care due to his age and health problems and be segregated from the rest of the prison population, if needed for safety reasons, based on comments from several persons that he would be a homicide target.

During the summer of 2003 Chavez fondled the breasts and buttocks of a then 13-year-old female teenager whom he supervised.

About a year later, the victim's younger sister found references to the touching in the victim's journal and told her parents. Grants Police then met with the victim and her parents and were told that Chavez took the girl to the city's tool shed a number of times to get tools and touched her breasts on the outside of her clothing on several occasions.

Police were told he also touched her while they were in the old dinosaur museum, and began touching her two to three times a week.

During an interview at the police department, Chavez told police while being interviewed that he touched her in the summer of 2003 and occasionally hit the backside of her buttocks with his hand but did not recall how many times he did this.

After a warrant for his arrest was obtained by Grants Police on Sept. 13, 2004, he turned himself in the following day.

The Adult Parole and Probation Department's pre-sentencing report recommended 43 years in prison, in essence, one year for each count that he was convicted.

Chavez faced a sentence of three years per guilty verdict and a maximum of $5,000 per count, totaling 129 years in state prison and a fine of $215,000. Originally, he was charged with 86 counts of the crime.

During the pre-trial process, Chavez's Gallup lawyer R. David Peterson motioned to quash the grand jury indictment and to suppress Chavez's statement to police.

Martinez-Olguin stated denied the motions due to Miranda warnings not being required because Chavez's statements were not made during a "custodial interrogation."

She also ruled the interview took place at the police department, and that while Chavez testified during the pre-trial hearing that he was scared during the police interrogation, he was not under arrest or in custody and could have left any time.

She stated that he appeared at the police department of his own free will and his own time frame.

Friday Chavez's wife broke down begging the judge not to send her husband to prison. She was taken to Cibola General Hospital by ambulance for treatment.

The victim's mother read a letter written by the teen, stating that Chavez repeatedly ruined her daughter's life which she is now just getting back. The teen wrote that she had a lot of anger and cried herself to sleep for a year.

She stated she was angry at Chavez, herself and her parents (for not knowing what was happening).

The letter stated that the teen felt Chavez had stripped her of her dignity and youth and for that year her grades and health suffered.

"What should have been one of the best years of my life was gone," she stated.

She urged punishment so that no one else will have to undergo such an experience. She stated she saw no signs of remorse from him and he had shown himself to be untrustworthy and vindictive.

The two-and-a-half year ordeal had been costly in both money and emotions, she wrote.

A key witness for the defense, Moss Aubrey, an experienced sex offender psychologist testified that Chavez is unlikely to repeat the acts. He said Chavez is in the lowest 5 percent of such offenders.

Thirteenth Judicial District Senior Trial Attorney Kristina Faught-Hollar disagreed and told the court that Cibola County has almost twice the rate of sex offenders in the state, at 9 percent compared to 4.7 percent and said such behavior should not go unpunished, he took advantage of a young girl and was convicted by a jury, while pushing for the 43 year sentence.

Despite the mitigating factors of his age, lack of higher education, military record, a history of no prior convictions, and good support from family and friends, a jury still convicted him, she said.

— To contact reporter Jim Maniaci, call (505) 285-6184 or fax: (505) 285-6597; to contact reporter Jim Tiffin, call (505) 287-2197, or e-mail: tiffin.independent@yahoo.com.