Former daycare worker kidnapped, raped 5-year-old girl
Former daycare worker kidnapped, raped 5-year-old girl
A young woman charged with abducting a 5-year-old Philadelphia girl from school and raping her had frequently viewed Japanese anime depicting sexual torture, prosecutors disclosed Thursday.
The evidence was revealed as the trial was delayed until next week.
Prosecutors asked to introduce the video evidence involving sexual humiliation and bondage to persuade jurors that 21-year-old defendant Christina Regusters could have been the lone attacker. The girl suffered devastating injuries that required surgery.
‘(This) is so far out of the realm of what an average juror would be used to,’ Assistant District Attorney Erin O’Brien argued. ‘The only way to establish motive and intent is to introduce this evidence.’
However, Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart found the cartoon nature of the material too far removed from the crime, and ruled it inadmissible. He also said the material is not illegal in Pennsylvania.
‘I think we’re stretching it to say …, as horrid and as vulgar as these images may be, that they can then be used as proof that she sexually abused a complaining witness,’ Minehart said.
He agreed to revisit the decision, though, if the defense implies that Regusters could not be sexually interested in girls or that other people must be involved.
Prosecutors will be allowed to present accusations that the former day care worker had molested a young female relative, and Minehart also allowed in computer searches about Muslim clothing and the destruction of DNA.
Police believe Regusters donned Muslim garb to pose as the child’s mother and remove her from her kindergarten at Bryant Elementary School in west Philadelphia in January 2013, telling a substitute teacher she was taking her out for breakfast.
The crime stunned some parents in the city, given that the girl was abducted from her classroom and the only person charged was a woman.
The girl was blindfolded for much of her 18-hour ordeal, but later helped lead police to Regusters by describing details including a talking bird she heard in the house where she was held. She was found shivering under playground equipment, partially clothed, early the next morning.
‘I’ve been stolen,’ she said to the man who found her.
