DUBLIN — It was Jane Doe’s first time laying eyes on Juan Aguilar since the 44-year-old man had been convicted of trafficking her to the Bay Area and keeping her in a backyard shed at his San Leandro home, where she’d later tell police he’d rape her “constantly.”
The Aug. 29 court date marked nearly four years to the day since San Leandro police investigators discovered her in the shed, following up on a tip from child protective services in San Francisco. Back then, Doe was 15. A Honduran native, she knew no one but her rapist, who brought her to the U.S. and would later coach her to “do the usual” as he set up dates with men who wanted to sexually abuse her for cash, according to court records.
Since 2021, Doe’s undertaken the painful healing process, using walking, cycling, reading and therapy to embark down her difficult path. Aguilar has been in jail the entire time, and has now been sentenced to 18 years for human trafficking, rape and forcible oral copulation. When he was formally sentenced to prison on Aug. 29, Doe wrote a statement but asked a county victims’ advocate to read it aloud, court records show.
“There is sadness, anger, and I feel vulnerable when remembering, as if every word is laden with a pain that has not yet fully healed. The nights are the hardest,” Doe wrote. “I often sleep terribly and have nightmares, trapped in memories that I cannot undo, longing to regain my lost innocence.”
But she added: “I want you to know that I am working hard to reconcile my past and my present. I have the support of good people who encourage me, and I have a therapist.”
In 2021, Doe’s statement to police was almost too horrible to believe. She described how Aguilar, who had a Honduran passport, traveled there in 2020 and made contact with Doe’s grandmother, and balked when the woman said he was “too old” for Doe. At the time, police believed Doe was 17, but came to find out she was actually 15, court records show.
“(Aguilar) also returned in January with a gun and threatened to kill them, so Doe left with him on a bus. He first raped her at an unknown hotel … The two traveled to Guatemala, where defendant Aguilar raped her again and threatened to let him do what he wanted or ‘you know what will come of your grandmother,’” according to a court filing by prosecutors. “From Guatemala they traveled to Mexico, where he raped her again. He left her with a ‘coyote’ who was to help her cross the border. That ‘coyote’ also forced her to have sex with him. In May of 2021, the ‘coyote’ brought Doe across the border. She first was brought to Dallas, and then a male drove her to San Leandro.”
She ended up in Aguilar’s backyard shed, occasionally leaving to spend time in a nightclub basement in San Francisco — where one of his family members owned a clothing shop — or to be sexually abused by paying customers, prosecutors said in court filings. Eventually, she was able to alert a CPS employee in San Francisco, leading to the October 2021 police raid.
Aguilar gave a police interview in which he admitted to sex with Doe on four occasions, and claimed to be a bouncer at a club where his wife, Margaret Wilson, was engaged in prostitution, authorities said. He denied ever trafficking Doe.
Wilson, like Aguilar, was charged with kidnapping to commit a sex crime, human trafficking of a minor, forcible rape, and forcible oral copulation, under the theory that she either helped Aguilar abuse Doe or sometimes participated in it. She pleaded no contest to an assault charge for probation and time already served in jail. Court filings say that Wilson has “very complex” medical problems and had listed Aguilar as her caretaker.
Aguilar was transferred to North Kern State Prison on Sept. 3, and remains there, records show.