Accused Las Cruces child molester behind bars

A Las Cruces man was arrested Saturday for allegedly molesting his girlfriend’s 11-year-old autistic daughter.

Rodrigo Escarsega, 38, faces 10 counts of criminal sexual penetration. He admitted to having sex with the girl every other week for the past six months, according to a Las Cruces Police Department report.

But the girl told police that the abuse had gone on for as many as three years. The girl’s mother had been dating Escarsega for five years, he told police.

The mother learned of the abuse Saturday when she found her daughter watching pornography on a computer. According to the police report, the girl told her mother that Escarsega had shown her how to access it.

“As soon as the words came out of her mouth, I called the police,” said one of the girl’s close relatives, who preferred to remain anonymous to protect the girl’s identity. “I believed her the second the words came out of her mouth.”

For the past eight months, the victim and her mother had lived with Escarsega and his 10-year-old daughter on North Tornillo Street in Las Cruces. When the family first met Escarsega, he had a drug problem, the relative said.

“We trusted him,” she said. “I thought we could trust him.”

Escarsega regularly babysat other kids in the neighborhood, the relative said. But she believes her family member is the only one to have been molested.

The girl wanted the abuse to stop but didn’t tell anyone, she told police, because she feared hurting the defendant’s feelings or getting him in trouble.

Escarsega was himself molested as a child, according to the report.

“I had feelings,” the relative said. “I never thought it would be with a child. Because he said he would never do it to a child, because it had been done to him, and it hurt him, and he hated it.”

Escarsega was booked into the Dona Ana County Detention Center on Saturday. He’s being held on a cash-only $100,000 bond.

He told police that what he had done was evil and wrote an apology letter to the girl’s mother.

But the girl has already forgiven Escarsega and is even concerned for his well-being, the relative said. Escarsega showed the girl attention, she said, and that’s all the girl wanted.

“It’s over for her,” the woman said. “She took a shower this weekend and the mirror got fogged up. And in the fogged up mirror, she wrote, ‘I’m free.’ And she drew a picture of a little girl smiling. So all this hell we are going through now is worth it, because she’s free.”