28-year-old Gerson Fuentes, the illegal alien who impregnated a 10-year-old Ohio girl at the tragic center of a viral post-Roe abortion story, could spend just a minimum of 25 years in prison after pleading guilty this week to repeatedly raping the child.
Fuentes pled guilty Wednesday to one count of first-degree felony rape of a child under age 10 and one count of first-degree felony rape in Franklin County, a year after the child's mother—who was dating Fuentes, let the man live in their apartment, and tearfully defended him in a TV interview—unnecessarily hauled the little girl across state lines to nearby Indiana for an abortion.
Now, her daughter's childhood rapist has the chance of parole at the behest of the victim's "begging" family. Both parties, the prosecution, and the defense, recommended a combined life sentence in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years.
Townhall obtained a copy of the "special instructions" sent to the judge overseeing the case.
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Despite her impassioned dissent, Judge Julie Lynch sentenced Fuentes to the recommended sentence "without comment," following the wishes of the girl's family. Per court footage, Lynch declared from the bench before issuing the sentence:
Anyone who's been in this courtroom for the last 20 years knows how this court feels about babies, young people, being violated. However, today, by the request of the child's family, this court will be sentencing without comment. And everyone knows how hard that's going to be for me, because the court considers this the worst of the offense. But, the family has asked for me to sentence without comment. The family has agreed to this, and this is a hard pill for this court to swallow, to take this joint recommendation. If that family hadn't begged me to take this joint recommendation, this would never be happening.
Lynch wasn't required to honor the request and could've sentenced Fuentes to life in prison without the opportunity for parole.
Franklin County prosecutor Dan Meyer said that he consulted with the victim's mother and Fuentes's girlfriend, 34-year-old Lourdes "Lulu" Gomez, before finalizing the plea agreement, adding that Gomez "is not objecting" to the guilty plea or sentence. Townhall was the first to report that Gomez was in a domestic partnership with Fuentes, whom she endearingly called her "baby."
Fuentes's defense attorney Zachary Olah told the Columbus Dispatch that Fuentes had been cooperative since the beginning. "He was anxious to get this resolved, and we're happy we were able to get it done today for everybody involved," Olah said.
According to the Columbus Police Department, through a Spanish interpreter, Fuentes confessed in a law enforcement interrogation to raping the girl twice, who was only nine "at the time of conception," and DNA—gathered from the baby's remains, entered into evidence as "the products of conception," and used in a paternity test—verified that Fuentes was the child's rapist.
A trial was set to take place, which was avoided through Fuentes's guilty-plea deal. Fuentes will register as a Tier III sex offender and remain on the registry for a lifetime. At the hearing, Fuentes confirmed that he is not a U.S. citizen and is at risk for deportation.
In the aftermath of the landmark Dobbs decision, the heart-wrenching story captured the nation's attention when radical pro-abortion activists, including the child's abortionist now in hot water for blabbing about the case to the Gannett-owned Indianapolis Star, used the girl's out-of-state abortion as fodder for peeling back restrictions on killing unborn children, although she would have been eligible for an abortion in Ohio because of its pro-life Heartbeat Bill's "substantial harm" exception that is designed to protect the mother's life and to prevent "a serious risk of...substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function."
The doctor who performed the abortion, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, aborted the baby on June 30, 2022, days after the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling overturned Roe v. Wade. The girl was six weeks and three days pregnant, Bernard said, claiming that the girl was forced to travel to Indiana for the baby-killing procedure because of Ohio's abortion ban that's applicable as soon as a fetal heartbeat is detected. (Cardiac activity appears around six weeks of pregnancy.)
In late May, Bernard was fined $3,000 by Indiana's medical licensing board for violating three counts of patient privacy laws. However, the letter of reprimand did not restrict Bernard's ability to "practice medicine." During deliberations at the 13-hour hearing, the board's president Dr. John Strobel said: "I think she's a good doctor [...] I think she's safe to go back to practice."
The board also found Bernard, accused of a child-abuse reporting violation for allegedly failing to follow proper protocol, not liable. Bernard, a mandated reporter, had listed the child rapist as a minor in a report to Indiana authorities, misreporting the sexual abuser's age as 17, off an entire decade, in an official filing to the state's Department of Health.
After the Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist had publicly discussed the then-private matter with the IndyStar, the local news outlet's July 1, 2022, article spotlighting the girl's abortion ignited a media firestorm that even reached the Biden White House.
BREAKING: Judge rules 27-year-old illegal alien Gerson Fuentes, accused of repeatedly raping and impregnating the 10-year-old Ohio girl, will be held WITHOUT BOND pic.twitter.com/GEpcmo1fQc
— Mia Cathell (@MiaCathell) July 28, 2022
While some skeptical high-profile conservatives had questioned the veracity of the single-source sensational story, soon after news broke of Fuentes's arrest in July 2022, vulturous pro-abortion radicals celebrated that a little girl was, in fact, impregnated by rape. But then, the narrative took an inconvenient nosedive, leading the pro-abortion Left to toss the child rape case around like a hot potato; their cheers for tragedy subsided when it was revealed that the child rapist is a Guatemalan national illegally living in America near Columbus, a so-called "sanctuary city" that Democrats advertise as a safe harbor for unlawful immigration.
Fuentes, charged with first-degree felony rape of a child under 13yo, was arraigned Wednesday morning. He has a preliminary hearing in Franklin County Municipal Court scheduled for July 22. pic.twitter.com/uPwUvtdYgt
— Mia Cathell (@MiaCathell) July 13, 2022
Following Fuentes's first court appearance, Gomez insisted that her sexually abused child is "fine" and "everything they're saying" about her live-in boyfriend is "a lie," she maintained in a televised interview with Noticias Telemundo. "Of course," Gomez asserted on-camera when asked if Fuentes was innocent. In a follow-up Telemundo video, a neighbor said Fuentes is also the father of Gomez's child she was carrying in her womb. A family photo Gomez posted to Facebook, where she had proudly displayed Fuentes in her profile picture, showed her surrounded by six school-aged children. It's not yet been revealed if the girl is still in the mother's custody or if the mother will be facing criminal charges for seemingly enabling her daughter's sexual abuse.
WATCH: A source confirmed to Telemundo that the mother of the 10-year-old rape victim is in a relationship with Fuentes.
— Mia Cathell (@MiaCathell) July 16, 2022
"He's her partner. And he is the father of the child [the mother] is carrying in her womb right now."
Translation by @BonillaJLpic.twitter.com/tt3t2CyoGI
At most, in August, Gomez was notified to leave the premises and summoned to appear at an eviction hearing in Franklin County Municipal Court for participating in "criminal activity" on the property where she housed her locked-up baby daddy.
EXCLUSIVE: Mother of the 10-year-old Ohio girl has an EVICTION HEARING for participating in CRIMINAL ACTIVITY on the property where she housed her baby daddy, 27-year-old illegal alien Gerson Fuentes, who's accused of repeatedly raping & impregnating her daughter at the address. pic.twitter.com/JazqmBoy9z
— Mia Cathell (@MiaCathell) August 15, 2022