A Woman With a Lot to Lose Acts on Her Sense of Justice

For six years in Orange County, she’d kept a low profile. With no driver’s license and no legal residency papers, she ran the risk of being deported if something went wrong. When she saw a police car, her usual reaction was to stop and go into a store to get off the road.

You could say she was living in the shadows of society, except for the 14-hour workdays, six days a week, at two factory jobs. She’s 40 but could pass for 25. She has four grown children, but her financial focus seems to be on getting her 23-year-old daughter into law school.

Job 1, however, was to not make waves. “I just go from my home to my job to the supermarket to my home,” she says. “I miss Mexico a lot, but I want my daughter to get ahead.”

This isn’t a story about another illegal immigrant trying to lie low. It’s a story about a woman who, seemingly with everything to lose, decided instead to strike a blow for personal dignity and her sense of justice.

That brought us this week to her attorney’s office in Santa Ana, where she agreed to give her version of what happened after midnight on Nov. 11 as she drove home from work. She alleges that an Anaheim police officer pulled her over for no reason, led her to a secluded parking lot and forced her to perform oral sex after first demanding intercourse. He had threatened deportation if she didn’t, she says.

The officer has denied the allegations.

The woman doesn’t speak English, and I interviewed her in the presence of her attorney, a paralegal and my colleague Jennifer Delson, who translated for me. We talked for 90 minutes, throughout which the woman’s legs churned like twin pistons. On various occasions, tears streamed down her cheeks and dropped off her face. During one five-minute period, she balked at describing the alleged incident in my presence, because I am male and she said she was embarrassed.

The details, however, all led to a question that interested me the most: Why did she come forward?

Here’s what she says happened:

She got off work at 12:15 a.m. that morning and went to a supermarket to buy chicken for sandwiches the next day. She then went to a gas station and saw the Anaheim squad car pull in.

She finished pumping the gas and left, noticing the police car following her out. She grew anxious, because he hadn’t gotten any gas. She decided to try to return to work and pass through the security gate, assuming the officer would peel off.

Instead, at what she thinks was about three traffic lights later, he turned on his flashing lights and pulled her over.

He asked for her license and identification. She had only the card given by Mexican Consulate authorities and which some jurisdictions and institutions accept as identification. He alluded to the fact she didn’t have proper papers and he would report her to immigration authorities. He mostly spoke English but knew enough Spanish phrases and words, she says, to make his intentions clear.

She asked him to take her van but not her, citing her four children. He asked her to move her vehicle to a nearby street -- something she knew wasn’t police protocol.

Once there, he fondled her and pushed her inside the squad car. She started to cry; he told her to be quiet. When another car approached, he turned the squad car lights on. When the car passed, the officer turned them off.

The officer then told her to get back in her vehicle and follow him. As she did, she wrote down the number of his cruiser on a napkin she had in the van. I ask why she wrote it down: “I thought he was not going to leave me alive. I left the note in my car.”

They stopped in an empty business parking lot. There, he forced her to perform oral sex. Afterward, he told her they would rendezvous again on a regular basis, with the service station as the meeting site. He said he’d bring a condom next time.

The encounter had taken its toll. “I vomited and vomited.”

She isn’t sure how long the incident lasted, but remembers getting home at 3:30 a.m. She drove around for a long time after they separated, because she was lost.

It would make a rousing story to say that, once home, she was fighting mad. She was not. She says she was fearful and psychologically wracked.

At home, a 22-year-old son-in-law asked why she was crying and why she had vomit on her clothing. She told him the story, and he, along with another family member, insisted that she tell police. She remembers thinking that no one would believe her because the alleged assailant was a police officer.

She went to two out-ofjurisdiction stations before being directed to Anaheim that afternoon. There, police took her report in a professional way. A week later, they arrested 30-year-veteran Bradley Wagner, who had retired earlier that day. He has since pleaded innocent.

By the time she finishes her narrative for me, the woman has shredded a tissue and is red-eyed and clearly emotionally spent. “It just makes me feel horrible,” she says at one point in the retelling. “It puts me back there and it’s happening again.”

Knowing that even women without immigration concerns sometimes fear reporting sexual assaults, I ask why she risked potential repercussions from accusing a cop.

The most compelling reason, she says, is that her son-in-law asked, “Do you want this to happen to your daughter?”

She says she assumed she risked deportation by going public. “I thought, ‘I’ll go back to Mexico,’ ” she says, “but he’s going to pay for what he’s done.”

I note the irony of her operating under the radar for so long, only to later confront the symbol of authority. “So what if they take me out of the country now?” she says. “It doesn’t matter. But I would like to take with me the fact that they lock this guy up.”

The Anaheim police chief has said the department will assist in ensuring the woman be allowed to remain in the country.

Her attorneys have filed a civil lawsuit against Wagner, the city and the department, seeking unspecified damages. At one point in our interview, the woman, unprompted, says she just realized how difficult testifying will be.

“It’s going to be so embarrassing, because there’s going to be so many people there. How can I look at the people? What are they going to think of me? It will be horrible.”

I ask if she could do it. “If they tell me I have to do, I’ll have to do it.”

Wagner’s attorney, Jennifer Keller, was unavailable for comment Thursday, but her assistant says Keller told her to tell me that her past statements stood. In them, she told The Times two weeks ago that “this [case] was about two things: her wanting a shortcut to guarantee permanent residence in the U.S. and, No. 2, money. She must think that this is her ticket to easy street.”

Anaheim police spokesman Rick Martinez says the department’s arrest of Wagner indicates it believes there is “substance” to the allegations. The woman’s coming forward “wasn’t an easy thing to do, especially for someone that was undocumented; they may be fearful,” Martinez says. “She did the right thing.”

Near the end of the interview, I ask the woman if she feels she’s getting back to normal.

“I’m never going to be the same,” she says. As for trusting the police, she says, “They say they’re not all alike, but how do I know?”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at [email protected]. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.