A former fullback for the Cal football team who was accused of
raping a 14-year-old pleaded no contest to two felony counts and
will be sentenced next month.
A former fullback for the Cal football team who was accused of raping a 14-year-old pleaded no contest to two felony counts and will be sentenced next month.
R.J. Xavier Garrett, 22, of Gilroy, pleaded no contest to sodomy with a person under 18 and oral copulation with a minor, both felonies. He faces a maximum prison sentence of three years and eight months.
Police arrested Garrett in March after a 14-year-old girl reported he had raped her in the converted garage or shed he had been renting on the 8600 block of Delta Drive.
Garrett and the victim initially met March 20 at McDonald’s on 10th Street, while the victim was with a friend, according to court records. He gave the girl his phone number outside the restaurant, and the girl texted him back after her friend encouraged her to do so.
The girl told police Garrett called her about 10 or 11 times between midnight and 6 a.m. March 21, according to court records. They eventually agreed to meet the next day and got together at Church Street between Third and Fourth streets. Garrett then allegedly led the girl to his residence, which was a cottage unit behind a house on Delta Drive. The girl repeatedly warded off Garrett’s advances, telling him to stop touching her, according to court records. Eventually, he indicated he was interested in sex, and she said she was not. When she got up to leave, Garrett allegedly stopped her and then sodomized her on his bed, according to court documents.
Garrett told police the sex was consensual, no sodomy had occurred and the victim had said she was 18, according to court documents.
The victim initially told a different story to police about the incident after calling them from a friend’s house March 21, according to court documents. She allegedly told them she had been assaulted by four men who dragged her from West Eighth Street near Dowdy Street into a nearby alley, where one of them sodomized her, according to court records. However, police interviewed people who lived in the area, who said they had never seen nor heard any disturbance take place in the alley.
When questioned further about the incident, and after she expressed reluctance about allowing police to view her cell phone, the victim said the rape had taken place at Garrett’s house, according to court records.
Garrett will be sentenced 9 a.m. Nov. 22 in Department 110 at the South County Courthouse in Morgan Hill.
