Carlos Gomez: No time off for remorse.
A 69-year-old husband of a daycare provider was sentenced by a state judge Friday to 25 years in prison for raping two children as young as 3 years old.
Superior Court Judge Eliot Prescott handed down that sentence just before 12:30 p.m. after a tear-filled, two-and-a-half-hour hearing in a fourth-floor courtroom at the state courthouse at 235 Church St.
Dozens of grieving men, women, and teenagers filled the benches on both the prosecution’s and defense’s sides of the room to witness how the judge would handle the case of Carlos Gomez, whom a jury found guilty in March of five counts of first-degree sexual assault and two counts of risk of injury to a minor.
On one side of the room were Gomez’s victims, two young women now in their 20s, whom Gomez had repeatedly sexually assaulted between 2007 and 2012, starting when they were as young as 3 years old.
Those sexual assaults, which included vaginal intercourse, took place primarily at the Gomez’s private residence in Fair Haven. His wife, Micaela, according to a 2020 arrest warrant affidavit written by then-Det. Christian Bruckhart, was the victims’ babysitter.
The two young women were accompanied in court on Friday by their moms, who took turns standing beside their respective daughters and breaking into tears as they implored the judge to hand down a lengthy sentence.
“I want to say to my daughter that I’m sorry for putting her in the hands of someone who ended up causing her so much harm,” one of the moms said in Spanish, with a court interpreter translating her words into English. The mom embraced her daughter as both sobbed: “I never doubted you from the first day you told me.”
“You made me feel dirty. You made me feel uncomfortable. You violated me when you were supposed to be taking care of me,” one of the victims said to Gomez. She spoke about the anxiety and depression, the struggles at school and pushing away of friends, the intense feelings of fear and self-blame, she felt in the wake of his abuse.
“I hate you for making me think I couldn’t trust again,” she said to him.
“All of that is a lie!” interrupted Gomez, dressed in a baggy orange prison jumpsuit, his ankles chained together, his hands pressed against his earbuds to listen closely to the real-time translation of the courtroom’s Spanish language interpreter. “It is a lie!”
The judge told him to stop, that it wasn’t his turn to talk.
“I’ll never forgive you,” the victim resumed through tears, staring back at Gomez. “Go to hell.”
Gomez’s second victim and her mom offered similar testimony to the court. The victim spoke about Gomez grooming and sexually abusing her from the youngest of ages. Her mom spoke about the unfathomable horror of finding out that something so terrible had happened to her child for so long.
“I am strong. I am lovable. I am resilient,” Gomez’s victim said, looking up from her prepared remarks on her phone to look the defendant in the eyes. “This will not define me. I will not be broken.”
Gomez’s family members and friends, who filled the other side of the courtroom, then took their turns addressing the judge.
A total of 13 different people spoke up on Gomez’s behalf — including his wife, his two daughters, his son in law, his sister, several friends, and a young woman who was a child when in his wife’s daycare.
All defended Gomez as a hard-working, kind, family-oriented man. They said he sacrificed much when he left his home country of Ecuador to move to the United States, then spent decades providing for and supporting his wife, his two daughters, and his grandkids.
“He never crossed the line,” even though he had “plenty of opportunities,” said one former daycare attendee who was looked after by Gomez and his wife when she was as young as 3.
“He’s always been a man to me, someone I looked up to,” said Gomez’s grandson. “I respect him. I love him. … I never lost faith in him. Not once.”
His wife, Micaela, cried throughout her testimony to the court, which was also delivered in Spanish. She and Gomez, who have been married for 47 years, have two now-grown daughters.
He has been “a special husband. Many would like to have one like him,” Micaela said. She said she’s never had any problems with him, that they always clearly communicated with one another.
“Please don’t take my husband away from me.”
Gomez’s attorney, Greg Cerritelli, initially told the court that his client wasn’t going to speak up at Friday’s hearing. But when the judge asked Gomez if he understood that he had a right to speak if he so chose, Gomez stood up and started talking.
He described the accusations of his victims as “mean lies.” He blamed the state Department of Children and Families (DCF) as the entity that “created the lie” that he had abused these children.
“That is not true, and I feel discriminated against,” he said.
Cerritelli implored the court to balance “justice with mercy” when deciding how long to send Gomez to prison. He noted the mandatory 10-year minimum for Gomez’s convictions on several counts of first-degree sexual assault of a victim under 10 years of age. He said that Gomez has high blood pressure and diabetes and repeated that he is already 69 years old.
Assistant State’s Attorney Sarah Jones, one of the lead prosecutors on the case, asked the judge to impose a “lengthy” sentence on Gomez. Such a sentence would send a message that “those who perpetrate sexual assault on children will not be treated lightly,” she said.
Before announcing Gomez’s prison sentence, Judge Prescott spoke directly to Gomez’s two victims and their moms.
Addressing each of the victims by their initials, he described as “amazing” “the strength of character and belief in knowing this is the right thing” to do — to speak out about what happened to them, to try to get justice for the horrible wrongs done to them at such a terribly young age.
“You are strong, despite what he did to you,” he said as a number of people on the victims’ side of the room broke into tears. “You have something inside you that makes you strong. … Be proud of yourself, because you are amazing.” He urged them to stay in therapy, to speak up about and take care of their mental health, to love and trust and forgive themselves as they embark on a journey to build lives bigger than this tragedy. “I’m really proud of you.”
To their moms, he said, “you’re not to blame. You feel responsible. You are not. He is responsible, not you. You had no way of knowing. Zero.”
Forgive yourselves, he told them. Because you cannot support your children if you are not taking care of yourselves.
The judge then turned to Gomez. He spoke about how this was one of the most “disturbing” sexual assault cases he has presided over in his two decades as a judge — and he has presided over “way too many.”
What made this case so disturbing, he said, was just how young the victims were, and over how long a time period the sexual assaults took place.
This was a crime of “opportunity” and “control,” he said to Gomez. “You have a sexual proclivity for young girls,” pre-pubescent girls. “That’s a sickness.” He admitted that little in Gomez’s own history appeared to offer any kind of explanation as to why he did what he did. Except that “when people have a sexual attraction to young children, that seems to rule them.”
Blaming DCF won’t help, he said. He noted that Gomez would also get no “credit for remorse.”
“It’s difficult to decide what to give someone who is 69 years old as a prison sentence for this kind of abhorrent conduct,” the judge said.
He stressed that his actions hurt not only his sexual assault victims, but also his loving family and friends who showed up to speak in his defense Friday, and who clearly had not come to terms with the fact that Gomez had committed such horrifying acts.
With that, the judge handed down a number of prison sentences — ranging from 10 years to 25 years — for the various counts of first-degree sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor of which Gomez had been found guilty.
Prescott said the sentences will run concurrently, and therefore Gomez is sentenced to 25 years in prison, suspended after 21, to be followed by 10 years on probation. He also imposed two standing criminal orders of protection that bar Gomez for life from ever contacting either of his victims.
At that point, marshals escorted Gomez’s family and friends out into the hallway first. They took the elevator down from the fourth floor. Once they left, the victims’ side exited into the hallway, while Gomez was returned to custody for decades to come.