Another Victim Comes Forward After Seeing Article Alleging Sexual Abuse by her Stepfather

It had been seven years since he last touched her when Victoria* saw a jailhouse photo of her former stepfather online. Frowning under the headline “Man Accused of Repeatedly Molesting Child Under 14 Denies Allegations” was the face of Larry Paul Ramos, a man she never wanted to see again, a man who was now accused of hurting another. 

“It started when I was 4 (years old) and I’m now 22,” Victoria said. “[It] ended when I was about 15…I’m his former stepdaughter. It’s not anything that I really discussed with my family, so I’m now having to talk to them, explain to them what happened and go through the entire process of pressing charges on my own.”

Eleven years of abuse and 19 years of silence. Having told very few and only begun speaking to a counselor in 2014, Victoria has battled the scars of abuse since a DARE officer told her elementary class about the inappropriateness of touching in the swimsuit zones.

It’s affected every aspect of her life, she said—her relationships, her sense of security and her trust—and deciding to come forward was a crucial step she said started with honest talks, was furthered by counseling and was compelled by that headline and news story whose plot she knew all too well.

“I thought about it for a long time,” she said. “I got into a serious relationship at the beginning of last year and my boyfriend and I are hoping to get engaged and married soon and I just knew that I needed to be honest with him. That was really the first person that I’ve been so honest with.”

Victoria and her boyfriend talked openly about the abuse and discussed the possibility of pressing charges. Both knew what Ramos had done to her was wrong, but there was a lack of physical evidence and no one else had made an outcry.

With flashbacks of the suppressed horror mounting, Victoria began talking to a counselor in February 2014. It was there that she learned about pedophilia and there that she began to really consider the fact that she was not alone.

“I had always had in the back of my mind that there could be other people that he’s doing it to but I would focus on that I was the only one that he was doing it to because he had other children and they never made an outcry,” she said. “I just thought, ‘well, it’s been this long and nobody else has said anything. Maybe I’m the only one. But when I started going to therapy my therapist gave me the figures of how many children a pedophile will violate and abuse in his lifetime if never caught and it just absolutely stunned me.”

Talking about the possibility of continued abuse planted a seed, Victoria said, but she still wasn’t sure she was ready to come forward with her story. For years she’d done her best to keep it a secret, and to tell the world now would expose her to vulnerability not only as a victim, but potentially at her new job.

“We went back and forth about pressing charges,” Victoria said of herself and her boyfriend. “We had just talked about it and I really just felt that there was such a lack of physical evidence that nothing would be able to happen. But now that there is a victim who is a child, I just—it makes me sick and it makes me realize that I’m not the only one. I hope to give voice to any other victims that there might be and I want them to have the courage to come forward no matter how long it’s been.”

With sexual abuse starting at age 4, Victoria said she didn’t immediately know what was happening to her was wrong, but figured it out when officer Cathy Delaughter visited her elementary school to talk about drugs and abuse.

Delaughter, coincidentally, also took the report from the second victim on March 18, the girl whose story prompted Victoria to come forward and share her own.

“She was coming to the schools when I was in elementary and telling the kids, ‘If anybody touches you in your bathing suit areas that’s wrong and you need to tell somebody,’” Victoria recalled. “That’s when I realized, ‘oh my goodness, this is wrong’. At the same time, my father wants nothing to do with me…so even though I was being abused by this person, he was the only dad I knew and this was the only family that I had.”

With the hope of keeping her family together, Victoria remained quiet about the abuse until she was 15, when there were talks of divorce.

“At the time I was suicidal…” Victoria said. “I had recently tried to commit suicide…”

Victoria recounted her feelings at that time, remembering saying she’d kill herself if she was made to talk about her abuse, go to counseling or go to court.

“And I firmly believe that I would have,” she said. “I was just not ready to talk about it but I could not handle him being around anymore.”

A teenager in high school, Victoria carried the weight of a dark secret through her formative years and was unable to build real relationships until her early 20s. She attended Central High School and described constantly feeling “very heavy” as she was carrying something with her that she couldn’t talk to anyone about. Those issues followed her for years into adulthood, some still present now despite a blossoming relationship with a man she hopes to marry.

“I’ve always had trust issues with men,” she said. “I’m always concerned about my safety. I just went home about 20 minutes ago…and I always—if I’m home alone—I look behind the shower curtain or I look in the corners of my house to make sure that no one’s there. It’s changed my life dramatically, but at the same time I found a lot of strength that I didn’t know I had.”

Although she’s feared running into him for years in San Angelo, Victoria said she’s not worried about having to face Ramos in court after all these years and repeat to judge and jury what he’s done. She said she confronted him once as a teen and is now confident she can do it again to bring justice for herself and all other victims Ramos has preyed upon.

“He was yelling at me and getting on to me and I just retorted back and I said, ‘how can I respect you with what you’ve done to me?’” she recalled. “He pretended like he didn’t know what I was talking about and I said, ‘you sexually abused me. How am I supposed to respect somebody who has violated me that way?’ He admitted to me that he did it, while he lied about saying it only happened a handful of times…but he admitted it and kind of shrugged it off and said, ‘ah, it wasn’t that bad.’”

Now, she said, Victoria recognizes pedophilia as a mental illness and says she believes Larry Ramos is a pedophile who has slipped through the cracks of society without receiving the treatment he needs. That treatment, she said, would be best administered with a prison sentence, where he will be far away from any other little girls and won’t have the opportunity to re-offend.

“I pity him,” she said. “I have sympathy for his family. He has three children and I can’t imagine what they’re going through, but I want him to receive the help he needs and I think the rehabilitation of prison is going to be the best thing. I think prison is going to be the best for him that way he can’t hurt anybody.”

Although she still battles with the memory of how she was abused, Victoria says she has an excellent support system in place, not only from her family and her boyfriend, but in his family and her friends.

She hopes her story will not only bring justice to her perpetrator and the other little girl, but will inspire others to come forward as well.

“The first thing I would say to anyone in this situation is it’s ok to grieve,” she said.  “It’s ok to remember those horrible things that happened and to feel that pain. It’s something that’s very necessary in order to be able to heal. If you are able to find that strength within yourself after you’ve had that time to mourn the loss of, really, your innocence, I would encourage those people to take that stand, to be that voice, because regardless of who your perpetrator is, you’re probably not the only one. There are other victims and you can be that light, that hope for somebody.”

On April 9, Larry Paul Ramos, 44, was jailed for sexual abuse of a child continuous, victim under 14. He posted a $30,000 surety bond two days later. After seeing his story online, Victoria came forward with her own and told detective Bobby Elrod about what had happened to her. Ramos was jailed again on April 23 for aggravated sexual assault of child based on what Victoria told detective Elrod. He remains in jail with a $500,000 surety bond against him.

*Name of victim changed.