DALLAS (TX)
The Dallas Morning News
07:04 PM CDT on Thursday, June 23, 2005
By ROBERT THARP / The Dallas Morning News
So drunk that he vomited and could not stand on his own after a wedding in Irving, a 20-year-old Amarillo man testified Thursday that he was defenseless when the Rev. John A. Salazar sexually assaulted him.
In more than three hours of testimony on the opening day of Mr. Salazar's sexual assault trial, Beau Villegas detailed how Mr. Salazar – the priest in the small West Texas town where he grew up – guided him inside his Irving hotel room after a September 2003 wedding and promised to take care of him until he sobered up.
"He told me to come into his room and he'd take care of me until I was through being sick," said Mr. Villegas, who testified he had consumed more than 10 beers and several mixed drinks that evening. "He helped me kneel while I vomited. He ran warm water and washed my face."
Mr. Salazar then removed the then-18-year-old's pants and sexually assaulted him, Mr. Villegas said.
"I was in some sort of shock, petrified, intoxicated," he said. "I didn't now how to react. ... I could not have resisted if I had tried."
Earlier during opening statements and during cross-examination, defense attorneys Leigh Demasi and James Vasilas suggested that Mr. Villegas was not as intoxicated as he claims and that he had embellished his account.
"Each time he tells it, it gets more and more spectacular, more extraordinary and it grows," Ms. Demasi said.