Jail escapee sentenced 26 years after Turlock sexual assault

A 44-year-old man has been ordered to serve two years and eight months in prison 26 years after he escaped from a Stanislaus County minimum-security jail facility while awaiting sentencing for the violent sexual assault of a 17-year-old Turlock girl in 1990.

Juan Carlos Barriga was 19 when he broke into Michelle Silva’s home and sexually assaulted her. After Barriga’s Aug. 10 arrest in Texas after more than two decades as a fugitive, Silva told The Modesto Bee the attack left her scared of men and the dark. She said it also took away her dignity and confidence.

Stanislaus Superior Court Judge Thomas Zeff on Thursday sentenced Barriga to two years for committing assault with the intent to commit rape in the 1990 attack. Barriga was sentenced to an additional eight months in prison for escaping in November 1990 from the now-defunct sheriff’s Honor Farm in Grayson.

Deputy District Attorney John R. Mayne asked the judge to sentence Barriga to four years and four months in prison for both charges. Mayne said the court determined the defendant had shown no remorse for his actions, but Barriga had generally lived a law-abiding life since his jail escape.

Barriga pleaded no contest to escaping from jail; it was not part of a plea deal.

As part of his sentence, the judge ordered Barriga to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. Sex offender registration was part of Barriga’s 1990 plea deal. He pleaded guilty to assault with the intent to commit rape, and prosecutors agreed to drop a burglary charge for breaking into Silva’s home.

Barriga’s assault charge could have resulted in a maximum sentence of six years in 1990. The judge has to abide by those 1990 sentencing guidelines, even though the law has changed since then. Now, defendants face a maximum of nine years in prison if such a crime was committed against a person younger than 18.

Another change to the law is that a defendant can now face a maximum sentence of life in prison if such an assault is committed while breaking into a home. Had prosecutors scrapped the 1990 plea deal to seek additional charges and prison time for Barriga, they would have had to take a 26-year-old case to trial.

When Barriga was arrested in Dallas four months ago, police reports and court documents had to be pulled from storage as authorities pieced back together the decades-old case.

Silva had just given birth to her first child, her only daughter, when Barriga broke into her home. She lived in an apartment behind a house on Vermont Avenue in Turlock. Her husband was at work at the time.

It was about 2:20 a.m. when Barriga entered Silva’s bedroom and threatened her with a screwdriver, according to a 1990 court transcript when Barriga pleaded guilty. He held the screwdriver up to her baby daughter’s neck and told Silva he would kill her if she screamed. Silva said Barriga placed the child at the foot of the bed, and he sexually assaulted her on the floor as he punched her.

In August, Silva was glad Barriga would finally face justice. But the years had done little to diminish the psychological effects of the attack. She said, “You are never the same strong young person that you were.”

This story was originally published December 18, 2016 at 5:51 PM with the headline "Jail escapee sentenced 26 years after Turlock sexual assault."