Ex-Fed Found Guilty of Blocking Women From Reporting His Sexual Assaults
CONVICTED
A federal grand jury has found a former Homeland Security agent guilty of civil rights violations for sexually assaulting two women and then blocking them from reporting it to police. John Olivas now faces up to life in prison at his sentencing hearing on March 11. The two women, both former girlfriends, testified that he abused his position to intimidate them into not reporting that he’d raped them. The jury found that he’d attempted to rape one woman and then raped the other one twice in 2012. The first woman told the court that he told her police wouldn’t even investigate him because he was “above a cop” and “untouchable,” and that he threatened to make her “disappear” if she reported it. “The manner in which he persistently berated them and beat them down with the fact that he was above the law, he was better than the cops, he was a federal agent, ... is exactly what the civil rights statutes were designed to prevent,” Assistant U.S. Attorney. Frances Lewis said in comments published by the Los Angeles Times.