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Stamford victim testifies in molest trial
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STAMFORD — A 9-year-old girl who testified in the trial of a man facing charges he fondled her told jurors Monday exactly how he touched her during videotaped testimony played in the courtroom.
Juan Antonio Galicia, 38, of Stillwater Avenue, sat quietly with public defender Lisa Stephens as the tape played, with Assistant State’s Attorney Michelle Manning asking the girl question after question about her alleged abuse. Because of the girl’s age, Manning had requested that she be brought to state Superior Court about two weeks ago and be taped during roughly 20 minutes of questioning.
Galicia has pleaded not guilty to two counts of felony risk of injury to a child and a single charge of fourth-degree sexual assault. He refused a plea agreement that would keep him behind bars for four years and instead asked for a jury trial that could result in a maximum 45-year jail sentence if he is found guilty of all charges.
Galicia has been held in jail in lieu of $50,000 bond since his arrest in November.
During her taped interview, while sitting next to some drawings and diagrams of the human body, the girl said Galicia began touching her chest and private parts when she was 8 years old, just before she was going into the third grade.
When asked how many times the man touched her in a sexual manner, the girl said she lost count after the 15th time. The girl, whose name is not being released by The Advocate because she is a victim in the case, described one time when she was in her small basement apartment with Galicia and she was trying to help pick up the living room.
She said the two were alone — her younger sister was someplace else — and she did not have any clothes on when Galicia touched her chest and private parts. She also made motions her hand to demonstrate how Galicia had masturbated in front of her. She said Galicia asked her to touch him, but she refused.
Manning asked the little girl if she told anyone about the incidents, and she said no. Asked why, the girl replied, “He told me not to tell my mom.”
The first person to take the stand Monday morning was the girl’s mother, whose name also is being withheld to avoid identifying her daughter.
The woman, 36, has a different last name than Galicia, said the two shared a home for about nine years before he packed up and moved out last September. A house cleaner, the woman said she went to work in Greenwich early in the morning of Sept. 1, 2014, and left Galicia home to baby-sit her two daughters.
But that morning she returned home much earlier than expected. When she arrived, she testified that she found her younger daughter watching television in the living room and the door to the bedroom locked.
After demanding to be let in, Galicia opened the door in a T-shirt and shorts and, the woman testified, she saw her daughter standing by the door with her pajamas turned inside out, which was not the way the girl was wearing them that morning.
The woman said she asked Galicia what he was doing and he said the two were “playing.” When she got Galicia out into the living room and asked her daughter if he had been touching her, the girl said yes, she testified. When her mother asked if Galicia had touched her in the past, the girl said he had many times.
The woman said Galicia asked her to forgive him before she left the apartment with her two girls. When she returned, he had disappeared with his belongings.
Testimony in the trial is expected to end Tuesday.
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