4 Testify INS Agent Raped Them

In sometimes tearful and hesitant testimony, four Latina women said Tuesday that they were stalked and assaulted by an Immigration and Naturalization Service agent who used his badge to abduct them off San Fernando Valley streets.

James Edward Riley, 33, has pleaded not guilty to 17 counts including rape, rape under color of authority, kidnaping and false imprisonment in connection with seven alleged assaults between August, 1989, and last April. Riley preyed on undocumented Latina immigrants because he knew that their fear of the INS made them especially vulnerable, authorities say.

At a preliminary hearing that began Tuesday in Los Angeles Municipal Court, a 24-year-old Salvadoran woman testified that Riley pulled her over on a Van Nuys street about 5:30 p.m. April 11, demanded her immigration papers and ordered her into his car.

“I was so nervous,” the woman testified through a Spanish-language interpreter. “I was here illegally at the time. He said he was going to take me to the Federal Building . . . I didn’t want to get in the car, but what was I supposed to do? He was supposedly arresting me.”

Riley took a circuitous route to his Reseda apartment where he forced her to disrobe at gunpoint, then raped her, the woman testified. He later drove her back to her neighborhood, she said.

“I’ll never forget it for the rest of my life,” the woman said, glaring at Riley from the witness stand. “It was going to be my birthday in a couple of days. He told me, ‘Expect a call on your birthday.’ He said it sarcastically, like he was mocking me.”

Despite her fear of retaliation, the woman told her uncle what had happened and they drove back to Riley’s apartment house and took pictures of the building and Riley’s car. She reported the crime the next day. Police searched Riley’s apartment and turned up more than 100 identification cards of young women, which helped lead investigators to six more victims, police said.

In other testimony, a 31-year-old Pacoima woman who speaks fluent English said Riley identified himself as a narcotics detective when he stopped her and a male friend on the night of Sept. 15, 1989. After searching them and questioning her about narcotics activity in the area, Riley drove her to a dark street near a freeway and raped her in the car, she said.

Two other young women, both undocumented immigrants, also testified that Riley detained them, threatened in Spanish to deport them and their families and asked them to go out on dates. One woman said she managed to escape by running from her apartment after Riley grabbed her. The other, whom Riley allegedly forced into his car and handcuffed, said he released her when a security guard walked by the parked car.

Authorities believe that there may have been other victims but said they decided that the seven incidents in which they have filed charges provide a strong enough case. Riley faces 73 years in prison if convicted on all counts, McMullen said.

Meanwhile, defense attorney Otha Standifer said he will prove that some witnesses had motives to lie about or exaggerate the incidents, and others were assaulted by someone else but pressured into identifying Riley.

“I think he’s basically been victimized by overzealous police activity,” Standifer said. Riley, an INS employee since 1987, has been suspended without pay. He worked in the Employee Sanctions Unit, a job that did not involve detaining suspected undocumented immigrants on the street.

The INS has granted the women who are undocumented immigrants temporary resident status while the case is being tried.