A jury deliberated for less than an hour before convicting a Schuylkill County man on all child sex charges he was facing at trial on Monday.
Luis Perez, 26, of Shenandoah, showed no emotion as the jury foreman read off a Guilty verdict on 10 separate charges against him. Perez is facing decades in state prison following his conviction. He was found guilty of first degree felony counts of rape by forcible compulsion, rape of a child, and aggravated indecent assault of a child. Perez was also found guilty of second-degree felonies of statutory sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault, and other related offenses.
During the trial, which was held inside Courtroom 1 at Schuylkill County Courthouse, Assistant District Attorney Michael Fiorillo told jurors that Perez didn’t deny that he impregnated a minor. The defendant’s reasoning for why he believed it happened, however, Fiorillo found to be grotesque.
“He didn’t deny it, so we got the theater of the absurd,” Fiorillo said in his closing argument to the jury.
Perez’ victim testified at the start of the day’s proceedings that he touched her inappropriately and forced her to have sex with him since she was about 9 years old. She said – after being asked to pin down a more specific frequency – it would happen about monthly. The victim repeatedly said the acts against her happened “more than once.”
This continued for a number of years – with it only stopping briefly while Perez lived with a woman in Shenandoah – and she never told anyone because she was scared. It took until she approached a teacher and told her what had happened that an investigation was launched.
At that time, the victim was unknowingly carrying Perez’s baby, she said. The baby was born earlier this year.
As he cross-examined Perez, who agreed to testify in his own defense, Fiorillo was puzzled by his justifications and answers as to why and how he impregnated the minor.
Just prior, Perez had testified that he believed his victim took advantage of him while he was either too drunk or too stoned to know what was happening. In previous testimony, Perez admitted to drinking too much or smoking too much marijuana and when he did that, he couldn’t remember what would happen and he’d go into deep sleep.
Perez was repeating something he said several times in an interview conducted after his arrest in which he told Shenandoah Ptlm. Leo Luciani that he was “used.”
Luciani also presented jurors with a letter written by Perez while he was in police custody, prior to his initial arraignment. The letter was directed to his victim in which he apologized for what happened.
During that initial interview, Perez said, “It couldn’t be him,” but if DNA evidence showed him to be the father, he said, “If that’s the case, I f***ed up.”
During Monday’s trial, however, Perez said the allegations against him were essentially made up and the product of a girl who was an “attention seeker.”
“It’s all false,” Perez said of the allegations against him.
“Your (victim) just flat-out lied,” Fiorillo asked.
Perez said, “Correct.”
When confronted by Fiorillo about the unlikelihood that, if his story were true that he was taken advantage of by his victim in his inebriated state, he had the physical ability to have sex to the point that he could impregnate someone, Perez said, “It’s my understanding that you can get pregnant from pre-c**.”
At that point, Fiorillo gave a flabbergasted expression, set down a pen on his desk, and ended his cross-examination.
In his closing, the prosecutor told jurors, “The day of reckoning for Mr. Perez is today.”
Earlier in the trial, jurors heard evidence from Dr. John Peterson, laboratory director at Ohio-based DNA Diagnostics Center. That’s where Schuylkill County Children & Youth contracts to have DNA testing completed for paternity tests.
Peterson told jurors DNA tests showed that Perez was more than 8 quadrillion times more likely the father of the victim’s baby than a random person or that there was a 99.9999999999% chance of that being true.
Defense attorney Kent Watkins attempted to discredit Peterson’s findings on several fronts. First, he questioned whether Peterson was qualified because his lab is used in civil cases and not criminal. Watkins questioned the chain of custody of evidence and wondered why testing wasn’t done through a Pennsylvania State Police lab.
Following his conviction, President Judge Jacqueline Russell revoked Perez’ bail and ordered a pre-sentence investigation as well as an inquiry into whether he is a sexually violent predator. Formal sentencing likely won’t happen until early 2027.
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