UPDATE: On April 2, 2024, the Beltrami County Attorney's Office dropped the felony sexual assault charge referenced in this story, citing exculpatory information and a lack of evidence in the ensuing investigation.
BEMIDJI — The public defender for a Texas man accused of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl in Bemidji last fall successfully argued for access to the alleged victim’s confidential child protection services records.
Beltrami County Judge Jeanine Brand granted an in-camera review of the records during a contested omnibus hearing on Tuesday, Feb. 13.
The defense, in its legal filings, called for more evidence, arguing that witness statements provided to police are wholly inconsistent with the allegations in the case.
In a brief filed earlier this month, the defense for 23-year-old Oscar Ernesto Luna pointed to the alleged victim’s young age, potential drug use and complex life issues after reviewing witness statements.
In September 2023, the girl told responding officers that a man later identified as Luna and three others restrained and assaulted her at a home in the America Court neighborhood.
Officers located about a dozen other men in the home, most of whom were taken into custody by Border Patrol, which was reportedly brought in by the Bemidji Police Department to assist with a language barrier. To date, Luna is the only person arrested in the case.
A forensic medical examination of the victim last fall showed numerous injuries all over her body.
Assistant State Public Defender Steve Bergeson said an adult female witness told police the 11-year-old was not with her on the dates of the reported assault in September. But the girl had stayed in her home before for weeks with a purported boyfriend before the boy was listed as a runaway.
The witness is not identified in the defense’s filing. But in the victim’s September statement to police, she said an unrelated woman brought her to Luna’s home at the time of the apparent assault.
In another statement to law enforcement from the alleged victim’s mother, Bergeson said the mother admitted to using fentanyl and that she and the child’s father were currently experiencing homelessness. The father, according to the public defender, has an active felony warrant in Beltrami County.
In his brief, Bergeson questioned why the mother’s statement, collected in October by law enforcement, was not disclosed to the defense until more than three months later.
The victim’s child protection services records, according to Bergeson, are “essential to gauging her motivations for creating such a story.”
While not objecting to an in-camera review of the child protection records in a responding memo, prosecutor Simon Schindler-Syme wrote the victim has maintained she was sexually assaulted by a man with an orange eyebrow piercing, presumed to be Luna.
An in-camera review means the documents are inspected in a judge’s chamber or courtroom with the defense and state present and no other observers allowed.
Luna will make his next court appearance on March 5 for a review hearing. He remains in custody on an $800,000 bond.
Both the Bemidji Police Department and the Beltrami County Attorney’s Office have previously declined to comment on the case while it remains under investigation.
