A young 15-year-old girl who became the victim of sexual assault by her uncle in the 4th or 5th grade, stood proudly with her head held high this morning as she faced that man, Jacob Mediano, 29, of San Angelo.
The victim had an opportunity to face her perpetrator after Judge Tom Gossett with the 391st Tom Green County District Court handed down a 50-year sentence to Mediano in the TDCJ at approximately 11 a.m. this morning.
Before being taken away, the victim stared at her assaulter and said, “This case has impacted me a lot. But my foster family who I’m with now taught me a lot about God…My family, they weren’t there for me, and this happened. I’m going to forgive you. I’m going to forgive them, but not for them. I’m going to forgive them for me.”
This punishment came after a jury of Mediano’s peers and Judge Gossett listened to 2.5 days worth of testimony in the State of Texas vs. Jacob Mediano case. This morning, the jury was not present because Judge Gossett released them yesterday evening based on Mediano’s request not to face punishment by jury.
As he sat with his hands shackled in cuffs and chains in his orange jail suit, Mediano’s lawyer, James Millan, attempted once more to help his client. He asked for a minimum sentence since Mediano had no previous criminal record that showed he had sexual predator tendencies.
“Criminal history is a big issue you have to look at,” said Millan to Judge Gossett. “He has no history of being a child sex offender. I don’t believe he is a risk to the community in the future. I would ask Your Honor to take into account his lack of criminal history.”
During her closing arguments, Assistant District Attorney Ashley Knight said, “Most sex offenders don’t have criminal histories. [Mediano] didn’t go after anyone else because he had [the victim], sometimes multiple times a day. She had a family she lived with for years who didn’t even fight for her. She had an uncle she saw as a father figure and trusted. He violated that trust. She lost her family; she lost her baby; she lost her innocence. It’s time to show our community we’re not going to tolerate this.”
The Victim’s Testimony
The victim first took the stand yesterday. During questioning by the State, Knight asked the girl who Jacob Mediano was to her. She said he was her uncle, pointed him out and quickly looked away.
Between her testimony yesterday and this morning, the victim explained how she was in the 4th or 5th grade when Jacob first began touching her, and it was shortly after he had sex with her. When Knight asked her if she knew she was pregnant before Child Protective Services got involved, she said, “No. I didn’t know before they got involved. After, yes.”
Also, when asked how she knew Jacob was the father, the victim said he was the only one “she was with.”
Knight asked her to explain more, and the victim paused for a moment. “This is awkward,” she said, to which both Knight and Judge Gossett attempted to allay her nervousness.
The victim went on to explain how she referred to Jacob as “Dad” or “Daddy,” while she called her biological father “Jer.” She said she called Jacob Dad because that’s what he wanted her to call him. He also told her not long after they began having sex that they “were going to be together forever and have kids.”
When she stopped having her periods, the victim said she refused to believe she was pregnant, but when she felt movement in her body and told Jacob, he said, “Well, maybe it’s your heart.” Jacob also told her, “If you’re pregnant, you know I can go to jail, right?”
The victim also confirmed Jacob never used a condom during sex, which they had at least 20 times a week.
“It depended on how he felt,” said the victim. She added that he wasn’t the only one to make the choice; she did as well. She said she loved him. They shared a room and a bed, but the victim noted that Jacob bought a second bed for the room because he said, “Someone is going to think something’s up.”
The victim also explained how the day before her baby turned seven months, she placed her up for adoption. She’s also gone through five or six foster homes because of what she’s had to deal with mentally, and was placed on medication last May when she went to the hospital. Since being taken away from her family, she’s also had two CPS caseworkers and two lawyers.
Knight asked the victim how she first felt when CPS got involved. The victim said, “I was mad because I didn’t want to believe I was pregnant. I was mad because I didn’t want to be taken away from what I thought…”
The victim stated she thought her environment normal, but she learned the hard way that wasn’t the case.
The Parents’ Response
On Monday afternoon, the victim’s father, Jeremiah Mediano, said he didn’t believe his brother sexually assaulted his daughter despite the DNA evidence that shows otherwise. He said his daughter had a tendency to be untruthful. He continued to support his brother even after Millan attempted to pass suspicion onto Jeremiah as being the offender in this case.
The victim’s mother, Michelle Chavez Schwanz, who drove in from San Antonio to testify as the Defense’s witness said she was 14 when she had the victim, but was 13 when she was with Jeremiah. According to court documents, Jeremiah, then 18, was accused of sexually assaulting Schwanz, which the Defense brought up in court.
“Were you forced by Jeremiah?” Millan asked. At that point, however, Knight objected and Judge Gossett said he would not allow for Millan to proceed with that line of questioning.
Thus, Millan proceeded to ask about the CPS cases opened against Schwanz to verify if the victim had previously made false outcries against the mother. When asked about the relevancy of this questioning by Judge Gossett, he said, “If [Schwanz’s testimony] shows false outcries by the victim, the jury has a right to know that.”
The mother, outside of the jury’s hearing, said the allegations of abuse against her were “absolutely invalid.” Schwanz said the victim told other moms at an event random lies about how she would pinch and poke the victim. She also said the victim, after Schwanz had a seizure, told people she banged the victim’s head against the wall. She also said when family came to stay with them, the victim “screamed her lungs off” because she wanted to play in an area that she wasn’t allowed. Schwanz said the victim told her mom’s family Schwanz was hitting her.
Because of these allegations, Schwanz said, “They took [the victim] from me and gave her to my aunt. My aunt didn’t even want her. She gave her back to my mom.”
When the victim’s grandmother died, she went back to the aunt, and eventually made her way into the Mediano household in 2007 after Jeremiah got out of prison.
Despite Schwanz’s testimony, Judge Gossett declined the Defense’s request to allow the jury to hear this information because of the bias indicated on behalf of the Defendant.
“I’m not going to allow this,” Judge Gossett told Millan. Gossett said if Millan was going to try and discredit the victim, he had to do so in another way; therefore, the jury did not hear Schwanz’s testimony and she was relased.
Jacob Mediano’s Testimony
When Jacob Mediano took the stand, he held his head high and looked directly at the prosecution and the jury.
During questioning, Jacob was asked about his sleeping arrangements. Jacob said, “[The victim] got a new bed, so I took her old bed.” He added that the victim would sleep in her own bed upstairs while he slept downstairs after his mother had a stroke.
Jacob was also asked about the DNA evidence showing that he cannot be excluded as the baby’s father by 99.998 percent. Jacob said the DNA simply proves he’s related to both the baby and the victim because he’s the uncle.
The Defense’s Claims
Throughout the Defense’s attempt to discredit the victim, the investigation done by CPS and the San Angelo Police Department, and the DNA sampling, Millan said being that Jeremiah has a history of the same offense, is a registered sex offender, impregnated Schwanz at the same age as the victim and slept across the hall from the victim, he was surprised no one took a look at that. Nor did they look at boys the victim’s age.
However, Knight said, “DNA doesn’t lie. Science doesn’t lie.”
Millan also claimed breast milk and a lack of face masks may have contaminated the DNA testing; however, Rachel Birch, a forensic DNA analyst with UNT for eight years, said that wouldn’t have been the case because they would have re-collected samples for the test. She also said, “It’s not necessary to wear a mask.”
Based on her testing, Birch said that 99.998 of the male population is excluded from being the father of the child, and that the DNA tests showed a 99.998 probability of Jacob being the father of the child.
The Verdict
Despite his attempts to discredit the victim, transfer suspicion of blame onto Jeremiah Mediano, discredit the investigation and DNA testing, Millan failed to convince the jury of 12 men and women that his client was innocent.
At 6:30 p.m. Tuesday evening, Judge Gossett read the jury’s final verdict and said, “We, the jury, find Jacob Mediano guilty of Aggravated Sexual Assault of a child 14 years or younger.”
Gossett then scheduled punishment for 10 a.m. this morning, and released the jury since Mediano chose to face punishment by the court.
A Life Sentence Versus 50 Years
In addition to the victim taking the stand this morning for a final time, the last witness to take the stand provided some damaging testimony. Yvonne D. Garcia with West Texas Counseling for 23 years said she has worked many kids who have suffered sexual abuse.
She first met the victim in June of 2012 and continued services with her until September of 2015. Garcia said, when the victim first started counseling, she was “very guarded and had a lot of trust issues.”
Garcia also said, at the time, the victim was dealing with a lot being in a new foster home, being a new mom, starting a new school and dealing with the unknown. Not to mention, she had no contact with her biological family.
Since this has happened to the victim, Garcia said the girl has had to be hospitalized three different times, she had several changes in foster home placement, and she suffers from depression, anxiety and night terrors. The victim also had issues with peer interaction and with authority figures, and she had problems initially with providing consistent care of the baby after she was born.
The victim also resisted taking medications at first, but finally gave in after her first hospitalization. She’s been in a new home now for 30 days and is currently seeing another psychiatrist.
Knight asked Garcia what the long-term effects will be on the victim.
Garcia responded, “She’s already been given a life sentence: giving birth at 12; giving a child up for adoption. She struggles with adjustment. She has a hard time trusting.”
Garcia also said other things that may affect the victim are truancy, more suicide attempts, self mutilation, academic issues, dysfunctional relationships, promiscuity, and ongoing issues with mental health.
“This doesn’t go away,” said Garcia. “This is something she will have to deal with the rest of her life. She’s experienced abandonment by her biological family who sided with the perpetrator in this case. The point is to get to a place where these issues don’t dictate her.”
The victim, in her final statements to her perpetrator, showed she plans on taking a step in the right direction.
“I don’t want this to break me; I want this to make me,” she told Mediano.
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