Victim still struggles as escapee is nabbed 26 years after sexual assault

A man who 26 years ago escaped from the now-defunct Honor Farm just before his sentencing for a violent sexual assault in Turlock was arrested this month in Texas and returned to Stanislaus County to face justice.

Now 44, Juan Carlos Barriga was 19 when he pleaded guilty to assault with the intent to commit rape for an attack on a 17-year-old girl in October 1990.

What Barriga has been doing the past 26 years is a mystery. His victim, in the meantime, has led a difficult life.

Police reports and court documents had to be pulled from storage as officials piece back together the decades-old case, but the years have done little to diminish the psychological effects the attack had on the victim, Michelle Silva. The Modesto Bee generally does not identify sexual assault victims, but Silva agreed to the use of her name.

“You don’t ever get over it. You can move forward, yes, but you can never, ever forget it,” she said. “They take your dignity away from you.”

Silva was first victimized when she was 14, married off by her mother to a man in his 30s who abused her and wouldn’t let her use birth control. She had all four of her children before the age of 21.

Silva had just given birth to her first child, her only daughter, when Barriga broke into her home, 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 broke in, entered the victim’s bedroom and threatened her with a screwdriver, according to a 1990 court transcript when Barriga pleaded guilty.

He held a screwdriver up to her baby daughter’s neck and told Silva he would kill her if she screamed. “He put her at the foot of the bed and then he raped me on the floor,” Silva said. “He would tell me, ‘Look at me, look at me,’ in Spanish so I had to look at him. He punched me. It went on over an hour.”

After Barriga left, Silva said, she had to wait several hours for her husband to come home from work. She said her husband blamed her, said she must have been cheating on him.

Eventually her aunt picked her up and drove her to the Turlock Police Department. Silva said they took her clothes, examined her and drew a sketch based on the description she gave them.

Barriga was arrested a few days later. Silva said she didn’t know him but was told he lived in the neighborhood.

“How did he know I was home alone? How did he know I was in there? He had to have been watching me,” she said.

As part of Barriga’s plea agreement, authorities dropped a charge of burglary. The prosecutor at the time was recommending the minimum sentence of two years in prison for assault with the intent to commit rape, according to the transcript.

The charge had a maximum sentence of six years in 1990, as it does now. However, the law has changed some since then, making the maximum nine years if the crime was committed against a person under 18, and life imprisonment if done in the commission of a burglary, said John R. Mayne, the prosecutor assigned to the case now.

Mayne said the court must abide by the 1990 law. He said the escape could end up being the primary sentence if Barriga is convicted of it, in which case he could receive four years, four months in prison.

Barriga escaped in November 1990 from the Honor Farm, which for 40 years served as the county’s minimum security jail before closing in 2013. It’s unclear why Barriga was at the Honor Farm, but Mayne said it appears he was transferred there after entering his plea two weeks earlier.

On Wednesday, while waiting for Barriga to enter his courtroom, Stanislaus Superior Court Judge Thomas Zeff said to Mayne, “I’d like to know where he’s been for the past 26 years.”

Pieces of what Barriga’s life has been like while at large might eventually come out in court, but for now all that is known is that he was arrested by Dallas police Aug. 10 for being a fugitive at large on the two Stanislaus County warrants. He was extradited and booked into the downtown jail Monday.

Silva believes she isn’t his only victim.

“A pervert like that, they don’t change. He’s a predator and I bet he’s got more women out there that he’s done that to,” she said. “I hope that they come forward so that there will be more charges and he will rot in jail.”

Silva said the attack left her scared of the dark, scared of men, lacking confidence; it took away her peace of mind.

She divorced her first husband in the mid-90s but didn’t remarry or even date until meeting her second husband, Manuel Silva, a little over 10 years ago. She said it took Manuel Silva six months of courting before she agreed to go on a date.

She fell in love with him and said he was good to her but that she never fully trusted him or allowed her children to be alone with him, “because I wasn’t going to say ‘what if.’ ”

“You are never the same,” Silva said. “You are never the same strong young person that you were.”

She is glad Barriga finally is behind bars but his return to Stanislaus County has caused some of the trauma to resurface during a very difficult time in her life.

Silva’s husband died last month after a yearlong battle with small-cell carcinoma.

She’d planned to come to Barriga’s second court hearing Friday, but ultimately the thought was too overwhelming.

Barriga will return to court next month for a pretrial hearing on the escape charge and might be sentenced for the assault with the intent to commit rape charge.

This story was originally published August 27, 2016 at 2:42 PM with the headline "Victim still struggles as escapee is nabbed 26 years after sexual assault."