Girl Describes Ordeal of Rape and Captivity
By Al Baker
Originally published by The New York Times, August 14, 2001
FARMINGDALE, N.Y., Aug. 13 — Calling it one of the worst sex crimes they had seen, investigators described today how a Long Island couple lured a 15-year-old Massachusetts girl over the Internet, kidnapped her and sexually abused her for a week.
The girl, who disappeared from her hometown, Wrentham, Mass., on Aug. 3, was also sexually abused by a friend of the couple, the police and prosecutors said. She was able to get free of her captors after using her cell phone to call the police from the modest brown ranch house where she was being held.
At a news conference today, Nassau County officials announced that they had arrested the couple, James Warren and Beth Loschin, and the couple's friend, Michael Montez of Queens.
Officials charged that the girl was abducted by the Long Island couple after she and Mr. Warren made contact in an Internet chat room.
The police said today that the Long Island couple, who are not married, drove to Massachusetts to pick the girl up and then held her for a weeklong ordeal of sexual, physical and psychological abuse. During the week, the couple loaned their captive to Mr. Montez for two days of sexual slavery in Queens, officials say.
"In addition to the utter depravity of this crime and the lasting damage such an ordeal inflicts on a child, the fact that the victim and the Nassau defendants met in an online chat room is terrifying to us all, especially those of us who are parents," District Attorney Richard A. Brown of Queens said in a statement. "It is among the most despicable cases of sexual assault on a minor that I have seen in my 10 years as district attorney."
According to the authorities, Mr. Warren was charged with kidnapping, 10 counts of sodomy, 6 counts of rape and 1 count of sexual abuse; Ms. Loschin was charged with 8 counts of sodomy and 1 count of sexual abuse; and Mr. Montez, who was arrested Saturday, was charged with 3 counts of kidnapping, 5 counts of rape, 5 counts of sodomy and endangering the welfare of a child.
Mr. Warren and Ms. Loschin pleaded not guilty at their arraignment on Sunday. He was held without bail while she was held in $80,000 bail.
Mr. Montez, 35, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment tonight, and was ordered held without bail.
For a week after the girl disappeared, her parents searched for her. The police in Wrentham posted fliers and e-mailed her and left messages on her cell phone. And a local newspaper wrote a story about her seemingly inexplicable disappearance.
The girl, whom the police did not identify, was discovered on Friday night after she called the Wrentham police on the cell phone. They called the Nassau police, who went to Ms. Loschin's Farmingdale house, where they said the girl had been imprisoned.
At a news conference today, officials gave a chilling description of the charges. They said that Mr. Warren, 41, of Hampton Bays met the girl about two months ago in an Internet chat room where he discussed sex with her. On Aug. 3, he and Ms. Loschin, 46, drove to pick her up outside a mall where she worked in Wrentham. The torture began immediately, when the couple handcuffed the girl in the back seat and Mr. Warren sexually abused her as Ms. Loschin drove, the police said.
That night, they stopped at a motel in Exeter, R.I., and drugged and sexually assaulted the girl again before driving her to Long Island, where she was assaulted and subjected to "humiliating and dehumanizing acts," mostly in Ms. Loschin's house in Farmingdale but also on the beach in Hampton Bays and in Mr. Montez's home in Astoria, the police said.
Word of the crimes, and of the arrests, came on a steamy day as many children milled around near Ms. Loschin's house in this working- class town in eastern Nassau County. The allegations stunned Ms. Loschin's neighbors. Many cars slowly drove by Ms. Loschin's house on Lockwood Avenue, its front windows hidden by overgrown shrubs and its front and back lawns strewn with garbage. Her family, neighbors said, lived in the house in Farmingdale for about 40 years.
"My comment is that they be put away and the key thrown in the trash," Bernadette Lipari, standing on her front stoop, said of Ms. Loschin and Mr. Warren, her 9-year-old daughter nearby.
The police said they were investigating whether the abduction was part of a wider child-kidnapping ring. They confiscated a computer from the suspects and are examining its files, Detective Lt. Vincent Robustelli of the Nassau police said.
William R. Keating, the district attorney in Norfolk County, Mass., and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are assisting in the inquiry.
"We are still determining whether we will seek additional charges here," said David Traub, a spokesman for Mr. Keating. "And that will hinge at least partially on whether the New York charges address the bulk of the criminal behavior."
Lieutenant Robustelli said that Mr. Warren, a self-employed computer technician, had been arrested in Connecticut in 1979 and charged with risk of injury to a child, and was convicted of assault.
He was sentenced in 1981 and told the police he served three years, according to Lieutenant Robustelli. The lieutenant said Ms. Loschin, an unemployed accountant, had no prior criminal record.
The victim in the case had had trouble at home with her parents and had run away once before, the police said. So, they said, she initially agreed to go with Mr. Warren and Ms. Loschin. What happened turned out to be more than she ever sought or imagined, the police said.
"She willingly reached out to these people, had conversations with at least one of them in a chat room, agreed to have a meeting with this person and then, from there, I don't think she understood what she was getting into," Lieutenant Robustelli said.
According to the criminal complaint in Queens, the girl was made to wear high heels and black lingerie and delivered to Mr. Montez's third- floor apartment on 38th Street and told that if she did not do what he wanted, the Long Island couple "would beat her more than they already had done and would kill her and get rid of her."
According to the complaint, Mr. Montez stuffed toilet paper in the girl's ears, wrapped bandages around her eyes and ears, put her in a closet, attached a rope to a collar around her neck and tied it and her arms to a clothes rack.
"She cried hysterically," the complaint said.
Last Wednesday, the Long Island couple took the girl back to Farmingdale, the police said. Detective Stephen Hearon of the Wrentham police got a call from the girl on Thursday saying that she was safe and heading to California. She called again at 10:20 a.m. on Friday, saying she was in Los Angeles. She said to tell her mother that she loved her.
But the police traced her signal to a cellular phone tower on Long Island and said they suspected that the girl had been forced to make both calls under duress, as a ruse to throw them off. Then, about 8:55 p.m. that night, she was left alone in the Long Island house and called a third time, saying that she needed help.
"She said, 'You know, I told you before that I was out in Los Angeles? That was not true. They told me to say that. So start looking for me,' " said Detective Robert O'Connell, who was working with Detective Hearon when the girl called. "We asked her to find some mail in the house. She found a package" that provided the address where she was.
Detective O'Connell called the Nassau police, who rescued the girl and made the arrests.
"She is lucky," said Detective O'Connell, who said the couple came back while the girl was on the phone with the police and her call was abruptly cut off. "It definitely could have been a lot worse."
