An illegal alien who befriended a Tennessee family has been handed a 50-year sentence for raping a 6-year-old girl while her family slept, after being caught using a secret key to sneak into the house and hide under her bed.
Edwin Velasquez-Curuchiche, 42, is already serving 50 years for child pornography charges for the same incident. He pleaded guilty to the two charges of child rape and was sentenced on Dec. 10, according to the police.
Curuchiche, from Guatemala, had tried to get close to a family in Lebanon, Tennessee, four years ago, building up a relationship with three children, including a 6-year-old girl.
The father caught Curuchiche hiding in his daughter’s closet on 29 Oct. 2015, and held him there until the police arrived.
It later emerged that Curuchiche had previously sexually assaulted the girl as she slept, after sneaking in with a house key he had secretly had cut.
He was living in the U.S. illegally at the time in a nearby trailer park.
He was jailed in May last year for the pornography charges.
“Over a period of several months, Curuchiche established a relationship with the family and their three children, who included a 9-year-old boy, a 6-year-old girl, and an infant,” said a statement from the District Attorney’s office. “Curuchiche gave the children video gaming systems and other electronic devices, taught them how to play the games and offered to play with them when their father was not home.”
Parents Thought She Imagined It
Curuchiche tricked the mother into lending him a key to their house in Weatherly Estates, which he copied.
On September 23, 2015, Curuchiche snuck into the family’s home during the night and recorded himself sexually molesting the 6-year-old girl while she slept, according to ICE. He did the same on Oct. 1.
One night in later October, the girl appeared in her parents’ bedroom crying. She said someone had been touching her as she slept. One of the parents checked her room but finding nothing assumed she was imagining it.
He was finally caught on October 29, 2015. The family had returned from a shopping trip. When the girl went to her room she found Curuchiche hiding under her bed. He tried to grab her arm and told her to be quiet and play on a phone he had bought her, but she ran to her parents, and her father found him in her closet.
Court documents show Curuchiche was apprehended in June 2013 when he unlawfully entered the United States, according to ICE. He subsequently failed to appear for a hearing and was living in the U.S. unlawfully at the time of the offense.
Curuchiche had apparently tried to drug the 6-year-old. When he learned she was running a fever, he took a bag of medicine to the mother and encouraged her to give the child an adult dose of Valium. When the parents didn’t do it, Curuchiche tried to pay the girl’s 9-year-old brother to give her the pills.
“The defendant’s conduct here is among the most egregious that I have ever seen,” Acting U.S. Attorney Jack Smith said during Curuchiche’s earlier child pornography sentencing. “It is almost unimaginable that an innocent child and her family were subjected to such horrific acts by an intruder who masked himself as a family friend.”
