Illegal juvie rapist

Cottage School teen charged with rape is undocumented Guatemalan

By SHAWN COHENTHE JOURNAL NEWS(Original Publication: July 6, 2007) MOUNT PLEASANT -
A 15-year-old Pleasantville Cottage School resident charged with raping an 18-year-old female resident is a Guatemalan native with no known family ties in the United States who was found wandering the streets of New York City, police said.
"He is apparently in this country with no documentation, no family, no nothing as far as we are able to determine at this time," Mount Pleasant Lt. Brian Fanelli said.
Luis Flores was arraigned today on a felony charge of first-degree rape. Police say he came up behind the 18-year-old victim as she was walking up the campus driveway and threatened to set her on fire with a lit cigarette lighter unless she went with him into the woods. She did and police say Flores forcibly raped her there and then let her go.
Fanelli said Flores has been in trouble with police before but would not elaborate.
"We've definitely dealt with him on the campus several times since 2006," Fanelli said.
After being found walking the streets, Flores entered the court system and wound up at the residential treatment center for troubled children, Fanelli said. Police are working with Immigration Customs Enforcement, he said, to try to confirm his identity and age.
Jane Barowitz, spokeswoman for the Jewish Child Care Association, which oversees the Pleasantville Cottage School, declined to comment this afternoon on the investigation other than to say "we are distressed about this alleged assault, we have notified the police and are cooperating fully in the investigation. Our primary concern is the safety of the children, staff and community."
The alleged rape occurred between 7:30 and 8 p.m Thursday and was reported to police around 8:30 p.m. by a staff member of the campus' Edenwald Center. The victim was treated and released from Westchester Medical Center.
Flores was brought in late last night for questioning and formally arrested and charged at 3 a.m. today, police said. He was remanded to the Woodfield Cottage Detention Center, part of the Westchester County complex in Valhalla.
The assault was the latest in a string of sex crimes involving residents of two local residential treatment centers.
In March, a 12-year-old boy was accused of sexually assaulting another 12-year-old boy at the Pleasantville Cottage School. At the time, police had complained that officials there failed to notify the department of the incident. Instead, Mount Pleasant police were tipped off nearly four hours later by the Child Advocacy Center in Valhalla after the boy was taken to the Westchester Medical Center.
That incident came less than two weeks after officials at Hawthorne Cedar Knolls, another treatment center nearby, waited more than two hours to report an alleged gang-rape there. Three teenagers there were accused of beating and raping a 13-year-old girl after dragging her into a vacant building on that campus.