John Olivas’ explosive mood frightened his girlfriend.
In suits of rage, the federal agent would slam her right into a wall and choke her, she not too long ago testified. The insanity reached new heights one evening in September 2012 when she drove him dwelling from a Riverside bar the place he had been consuming closely, she stated.
Olivas, sitting within the passenger’s seat, put the tip of his handgun into his mouth and requested what she would do if he pulled the set off, she stated. She begged him to place it down. He waved the gun round “prefer it was a joke,” then set it on his leg.
On the journey dwelling, he received offended. He pointed the gun at her head and requested once more what she’d do if he fired it.
“I used to be freaking out,” she instructed the jury.
As soon as dwelling, she stated, Olivas knocked her down, dragged her throughout the carpet and raped her.
“I used to be crying, telling him to cease,” she testified. “He stored going.”
The 34-year-old lady, whom The Occasions is figuring out by her first preliminary, N., was the central witness final month in a federal trial of Olivas, a onetime agent with the Division of Homeland Safety. The Occasions typically doesn't publish the names of people that say they had been sexually assaulted.
The trial was a uncommon federal prosecution of a home violence case beneath a civil rights regulation that's usually utilized to cops or jail guards who beat, shoot or sexually assault suspects or detainees.
Olivas confronted prices that he not solely sexually assaulted N. and a earlier girlfriend, however abused his place as a federal agent to maintain each girls silent.
Prosecutors allege that Olivas, 47, satisfied the ladies that he would use his affect as a regulation enforcement officer to verify any complaints to police had been ignored.
After two days of deliberations at a courthouse in Riverside, the jury deadlocked on Dec. 15, and U.S. District Decide Jesus G. Bernal declared a mistrial. Prosecutors plan to retry Olivas, who denies sexually assaulting the ladies.
“That is an overreach of the federal authorities towards Mr. Olivas,” his lawyer, Meghan Blanco, instructed the jury. “The 2 accusers on this case should not credible.”
Olivas has already been imprisoned for abusive conduct. He served 21 months after pleading responsible in 2015 to state prices that he assaulted his father with a gun and injured N. when he tried to dam her from fleeing his home.
The federal prosecution of Olivas has raised disturbing questions for the Homeland Safety Division and the models of Immigration and Customs Enforcement the place he labored.
‘I used to be crying, telling him to cease. He stored going.’
N., former girlfriend of John Olivas
Above all, why did it rent Olivas as an armed federal agent in 2007, greater than two years after an ex-wife had filed public courtroom data accusing him of assaulting her?
Earlier than hiring Olivas, ICE did a full background examine and evaluated him beneath a “whole-person idea,” the company instructed The Occasions in a press release. It didn't straight reply questions on the alleged spousal abuse.
The ex-wife’s courtroom filings embody her handwritten accounts of harrowing scenes of violence and screaming threats by Olivas, together with some she reported to Riverside police in 2005.
She used the identical phrase that N. would use on the witness stand 16 years later to explain how she felt whereas beneath assault by the bald 6-foot-4 bodybuilder: terrified.
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After a fast flirtation on Fb in March 2012, N. and Olivas met for dinner at a BJ’s in Arcadia. Then 24 years previous, N. was impressed that Olivas was a federal agent. She’d studied prison justice in school and aspired to be a police officer. That first evening, Olivas confirmed her his badge, gun and SWAT gear.
“I believed it was actually cool,” N. testified.
Lower than per week later, she moved into his home in Riverside. What shortly developed was a cycle of volcanic tantrums and violence, adopted by profuse apologies from Olivas, typically with bouquets of flowers. It went on for 9 months.
Olivas, who weighed 260 kilos, was a foot taller than N. She weighed 110. The primary time he grabbed her arm and shoved her right into a wall, she was shocked, she stated.
“I couldn’t imagine what occurred,” she testified, recalling her bruised shoulder.
On different events, Olivas banged N.’s legs with a distant management, she testified. Prosecutors confirmed the jury a photograph of her legs lined with bruises.
Anticipating that jurors would surprise why N. stayed with Olivas, prosecutors employed a psychologist who makes a speciality of trauma. She instructed the jury that home violence victims typically stay in abusive relationships due to low vanity or a bond that persists regardless of the violence.
N. stated she had blamed the beatings on herself, thought she might repair their relationship by behaving higher, and was in denial about how unhealthy it was.
When she did threaten to name police, she stated, “He made me imagine they wouldn’t do something,” telling her “he’d crack a beer with them” in the event that they confirmed up.
She as soon as used her telephone to file Olivas saying that if she cheated on him, he would ship one in every of his “snitch” informants to beat her up. (Olivas was then working gang and drug circumstances at Homeland Safety Investigations.)
Olivas carefully monitored her telephone to make sure she was not talking with different males. He erupted one evening when some guys taking part in pool hit on her on the Brandin’ Iron dance membership in San Bernardino, she recalled. “He began screaming at me in entrance of the entire complete bar,” she stated.
Olivas walked to the door, she testified, “snapped his fingers and pointed to the bottom and stated ‘now’ like I used to be a canine.”
She got here as referred to as.
At Killarney’s, his favourite Riverside bar, Olivas was pleasant with the bouncers, however would present them his badge when he wished to chop the road to get in, then stash his government-issued pistol in a distinct segment the place kitchen provides had been saved, she stated.
The evening N. alleges Olivas first raped her, his consuming at Killarney’s made him “completely belligerent,” she stated. After they received into his pickup truck and he put the gun in his mouth, she was satisfied it was loaded, she stated.
Later, as she fumbled along with her keys on the entrance door to his home, he held the government-issued gun to her again, she testified. “I used to be shaking.”
Inside, she stated, he pushed her to the bottom, pulled her throughout the rug so laborious that her elbow began bleeding, yanked her pants off, and instructed her, “Don’t you dare bleed on my carpet.”
Olivas used one hand to pin her wrists above her head and the opposite to choke her whereas he referred to as her vulgar names, N. stated.
“Why didn’t you name the police?” Assistant U.S. Atty. Frances Lewis requested.
“I didn’t assume they might do something,” N. responded.
As a result of he was a federal agent? Sure, she answered.
The violence was relentless. Days after the alleged rape, Olivas’ aged dad and mom, who lived down the road, walked in on a heated argument. His mom opened the entrance door and noticed him on the prime of the steps threatening to hurl N.’s new laptop over the banister. She ordered him to place it down.
Olivas put the pc on the mattress in his bed room and picked up his gun off the dresser. He pointed it at N. His mom screamed.
“Get out of the f—ing home,” he yelled to his mother.
By the point his father arrived, Olivas was pointing the gun at his mom, N. testified. She stepped so shut that the muzzle was inches from her brow.
“Go forward, Johnny,” she instructed her son. “I dare you.”
N. began screaming. His father grabbed the gun and the boys fell to the bottom, wrestling over the weapon. “It’s not loaded!” Olivas bellowed.
Years later, Olivas would admit the assault on his dad was a felony. However for months nobody referred to as the police.
Lewis requested N. if she would have referred to as the cops if Olivas had not been a federal agent.
“Completely.”
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One query his latest trial couldn't reply was how Olivas received employed as a federal agent; even a cursory examine of state Superior Court docket data would have uncovered allegations of home abuse in his ex-wife’s two purposes for restraining orders.
His ex-wife was six months pregnant when she requested Olivas to maneuver out of their Riverside residence in August 2004. He left, however stored a key.
Olivas then let himself in a number of occasions whereas she was showering or sleeping and abused her, her studies say. He ripped a towel rack off the wall, compelled her to stroll on shards of glass from an image body he smashed, and broke a cordless telephone in half “together with his naked fingers” to cease her from calling police, she wrote.
In a single late-night telephone name, Olivas, who sounded drunk, threatened to grab the couple’s child out of daycare and take him away, his ex-wife stated. Afterward, she filed a police report and sought the primary momentary restraining order.
In Could 2005, a Superior Court docket choose discovered that Olivas had a historical past of home violence and granted the order. It required him to remain 100 yards from his ex-wife and the child. It additionally compelled him to promote any weapons in his possession or flip them over to police.
Olivas’ ex-wife received one other momentary restraining order in December 2007 following a Christmas Day household go to throughout which he’d threatened to “kill anybody I dated,” she wrote within the software.
By then Olivas was a newly employed officer on the Homeland Safety Division. In Could 2008, the division issued Olivas his .40-caliber Sig Sauer semiautomatic pistol. Possessing the gun violated the restraining order, which was nonetheless in impact, although it expired a couple of months later.
ICE spokeswoman Paige Hughes declined to debate why Olivas was issued the gun regardless of the order. Typically, she stated, workers are required to “self-report” domestic-violence safety orders to supervisors.
Hughes additionally wouldn't reply straight whether or not Homeland Safety tolerates home violence amongst its armed brokers, saying that they “are held to the best commonplace of professional and moral conduct.”
Though Olivas was by no means charged with a criminal offense involving his ex-wife, prosecutors referred to as her to testify on the federal trial.
The ex-wife burst into tears as she instructed jurors what occurred after Olivas let himself into the residence whereas she was showering one afternoon in 2004. He insisted they get again collectively. She refused. An argument ensued.
He grabbed her and held her arms straight by her aspect, she stated. He pulled her to the ground and compelled himself inside her, she instructed the jury, and ignored her tearful pleas to cease.
“I need you, you’re mine, you’re my spouse,” she remembered him saying with seething anger.
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N. had yet another story from her remaining days with Olivas.
One afternoon in 2012, she instructed him she wished to depart the home. He tried to cease her, this time by squeezing her in a decent bear hug, her elbows pressed into her ribs.
She instructed him to let her go. “It began to essentially damage,” she testified.
She heard a pop in her ribs, and instantly her left aspect damage so severely she thought she was going to throw up. She couldn't inhale sufficient air to speak.
Excessive ache continued for days. She wished to go to the hospital, however Olivas parked his automotive behind hers for 3 days so she couldn’t go away, she later instructed police.
“I don’t need folks to assume I beat you or one thing,” Olivas instructed her by textual content. “All I did was hug you.”
“You knew you couldn’t squeeze me that tough,” she replied. “You probably did it so I wouldn’t go away.”
She insisted on seeing a physician. Olivas texted that he was frightened a physician can be suspicious about bruises he’d left on her legs throughout intercourse.
“I’ll be in pants. Don’t fear,” she replied.
“Babe, you don’t perceive, home violence is a giant deal,” he texted.
‘I don’t need folks to assume I beat you or one thing. All I did was hug you.’
John Olivas
N. wound up visiting pressing care twice. Docs couldn't inform whether or not a bone was damaged. They gave her an elastic brace to put on round her ribs. No one notified police.
Throughout her restoration, N. instructed the jury, Olivas raped her a second time. She stated she had agreed to attempt to have intercourse, however as soon as they began, “it was excruciating, and I instructed him that we wanted to cease.” He refused, saying “no one tells him no,” she testified.
As he was raping her, she stated, she noticed his Homeland Safety gun on the dresser.
“I wished to only shoot him,” she would later inform the FBI.
Weeks later, she determined to interrupt upand moved out of his home.
“I simply wakened and I had sufficient,” she instructed the jury.
In a textual content alternate a couple of months later, she reminded Olivas of the evening within the pickup truck. Olivas denied that he put the gun in his mouth or pointed it at her.
“Delete that remark out of your thread,” he instructed her.
“I swear to God, you set that barrel in your mouth.”
“Cease,” he wrote. “I gotta go. Delete these texts please.”
She saved the texts, took screenshots, and on Oct. 31, 2013, contacted Riverside police.
‘I simply wished to shoot him.’
John Olivas’ girlfriend
Three weeks later, Claude Arnold, the particular agent accountable for Homeland Safety Investigations’ Los Angeles subject workplace, instructed Olivas that his authority to hold a gun was suspended. One other agent took his pistol, badge and credentials later that day.
Two years after that, Olivas pleaded responsible to state prices that he assaulted his father with the gun and injured N. by popping her rib cage.
He served 21 months of a four-year sentence. In 2018, a 12 months after his launch from a distant desert jail, FBI brokers arrested him earlier than daybreak at some point on the civil rights prices.
Notes that the jury within the federal trial despatched to the choose throughout deliberations confirmed they had been wrestling with prosecutors’ novel authorized argument that Olivas abused his energy as a federal agent within the alleged sexual assaults on N. and his earlier girlfriend. One of many jury notes requested what it meant for Olivas to “act in his official capability.”
Prosecutors say N. is raring for the Olivas case to finish; the retrial will begin in September. However throughout her testimony final month, it appeared that she had already discovered at the very least some reduction simply from reporting him to the police.
“As you sit right here at this time, are you continue to afraid of the defendant?” Lewis, one of many prosecutors, requested her.
N. regarded up and paused. She smiled barely and responded, “No.”
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