A former fullback for the Cal football team who is accused of
raping a 14-year-old will make not make a plea until May 27 as a
Santa Clara County Judge decided Friday to postpone his case.
A former fullback for the Cal football team who is accused of raping a 14-year-old will make not make a plea until May 27 as a Santa Clara County Judge decided Friday to postpone his case.
R.J. Xavier Garrett, 22, of Gilroy, faces the charge of one count of sodomy with someone younger than 18. He is in Santa Clara County Jail on $100,000 bail and could face up to three years in prison.
Judge Jacqueline Arroyo opted to continue the case at the request of public defender Michelle Vasquez.
When Arroyo asked Garrett whether he would support the case being continued, he simply replied, “Yes, ma’am.”
Garrett wore a brown jail-issued shirt Friday, occasionally rocking from side to side in his chair and at other times watching the hearings of other defendants as he waited for the judge to call his name.
Prior to the hearing Garrett appeared to be either talking to himself or mouthing words to two women who were seated in the audience. At one point, he folded his hands together as if making a sign for someone to pray for him.
Audience members included a woman who identified herself as Garrett’s sister and another woman seated next to her.
Garrett is accused of raping a 14-year-old girl March 21 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 that Garrett called her about 10 or 11 times between midnight and 6 a.m. on 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 that 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 that the sex was consensual, that no sodomy had occurred and that 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 that 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 that the rape had taken place at Garrett’s house, according to court records.
The woman at South County Courthouse who identified herself as Garrett’s sister said Friday that an attorney had said that no DNA has been found to link Garrett to the crime. Garrett’s sister also said the victim’s father has called and harassed their father since the incident occurred.
She said the victim’s story about the incident had changed over time, as evidenced in court records.
“As far as I’ve noticed, there have been multiple stories,” she said.
Still, Sgt. Wes Stanford of the Gilroy Police Department contended in March that the sexual encounter was “definitely not consensual even in the loose sense of the word.”
Garrett is slated to appear in court at 8:30 a.m. May 27 at the South County Courthouse for his plea hearing.
