Mexican immigrant pleads guilty to the rape of an 11-year-old girl

Associated Press:

A man who had an affair with an 11-year-old girl, got her pregnant and then took her to his family's home in Mexico has pleaded guilty to raping the girl and will spend 12 to 15 years in prison.

Hector Frausto, now 24, said he didn't know it was illegal to have sex with an 11-year-old girl when he began an affair with Dana Pevia in 1999.

Investigators have said that when Pevia found out she was pregnant, Frausto arranged to take her to his parents' home in Mexico. She disappeared from her bus stop in southern Hoke County in June 1999 and was not seen again by her family until March 2003, when she contacted U.S. authorities in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Pevia told authorities she was held by Frausto's family as a virtual slave for nearly three years, and that she escaped with the help of a second man who later fathered her second child.

Authorities found Frausto in Gates County, near the Virginia border, a week after Pevia returned to North Carolina with her two children.

Pevia's mother, Wanda, pleaded guilty in April to obstructing justice, admitting in court that, at the time her daughter disappeared, she knew but didn't tell that the girl was involved in a sexual relationship with an adult neighbor.

Frausto also pleaded guilty Tuesday to escaping from the Hoke County Jail in 2003, six months after he was arrested.

He will be credited for the two years and two months he spent in jail while awaiting trial, but could be deported once he finishes his sentence because he is not a U.S. citizen.

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