Liberian rape victim returned to state custody
PHOENIX — A Liberian girl who was raped by four underage boys in the apartment complex where she lived the in July 2009 has been returned to state custody less than six months after she was reunited with her parents.
The girl was 8 years old when the boys, who were Liberian refugees, used gum to lure her inside a shed at a west Phoenix apartment complex, where they took turns sexually assaulting her, according to Phoenix police. She is now 13.
The Arizona Republic does not identify sexual-assault victims.
The decision to return the girl to foster care came after an unspecified incident with her adult brother, and authorities are searching for a long-term guardian, court records show. Details of the incident were not available.
The girl requested that she be returned to state custody, said Jerry Cobb, spokesman for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office.
Attorneys for the parents declined comment, and the girl's court-appointed legal guardian did not respond to a request for an interview.
Cobb said details about what happened between the girl and her brother might have been revealed during dependency hearings in juvenile court. Records of those proceedings are confidential.
Prosecutors originally charged the oldest of the sexual-assault suspects, who was 14 at the time of the assault, as an adult. He later pleaded guilty in juvenile court, spent time in treatment facilities and served probation. He is now 20.
Juvenile charges against the other three — ages 12, 10 and 9 at the time — were dismissed after the prosecutors determined they were incompetent to stand trial. They are now 18, 15 and 14 years old.
The case made international headlines after the father reportedly told police and caseworkers for CPS that he didn't want the girl in the family's home because the crime shamed the family. He later vehemently denied that he had disowned his daughter. It also opened eyes to the horrors of Liberia's civil war, in which rape was often used as a weapon and victims were sometimes blamed for their fate.
Police arrested the girl's parents in November 2009 on suspicion of child abuse unrelated to the sexual assault. The Republic is not identifying the parents in order to protect the girl's identity.
In July, the prosecutors announced that the case would be dismissed in 2015 as long as the parents complied with conditions set by the Arizona Department of Child Safety, the agency that has replaced CPS.
They have followed the terms of the deferred-prosecution agreement, Cobb said.
The father, now 64, and mother, 52, aren't due in Maricopa County Superior Court until March.