An Ohio man has been arrested and charged with the rape of a 10-year-old girl, whose travel across state lines to receive an abortion captured national attention.
Gerson Fuentes, 27, was arraigned on Wednesday in Franklin County Municipal Court in Columbus, where he was charged with the rape of a child under 13 years old, a felony that can carry a lifetime prison sentence. He was being held on $2 million bond.
The arrest, and its connection to the case of the young rape victim, was first reported in The Columbus Dispatch after a public dispute over whether the story was true.
a wave of abortion restrictions, including a law in Ohio that bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, with no exception for rape or incest. The law blocked the 10-year-old from receiving an abortion in her home state after her parents discovered she was pregnant.
According to a doctor familiar with her case, and testimony from a court hearing, the girl’s family took her to Indiana to receive an abortion, where the procedure is still legal up to 22 weeks.
The girl’s story, which first appeared in The Indianapolis Star, was immediately seized on by abortion rights advocates as the tragic but expected consequence of severe abortion restrictions.
President Biden cited the story after signing an executive order on abortion: “Ten years old. Raped, six weeks pregnant. Already traumatized. Was forced to travel to another state.”
In an editorial published before news of the arrest, The Wall Street Journal called the case “an unlikely story from a biased source that neatly fits the progressive narrative but can’t be confirmed.” The Journal later added an editor’s note acknowledging the arrest.
In a video of the court hearing posted by the conservative news site Townhall, Detective Jeffrey Huhn testified that the victim was a 10-year-old whose mother took her to Indiana to receive an abortion at the end of June when she was just past six weeks pregnant. Detective Huhn said in Wednesday’s hearing that Mr. Fuentes confessed to raping the girl twice.
The Columbus Division of Police declined to comment.
A spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Mr. Fuentes was an undocumented immigrant. A lawyer for Mr. Fuentes did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The timeline laid out in the police testimony matches the account provided by Dr. Caitlin Bernard, the OB/GYN who first told The Star about the case.
“It’s always shocking to me that people are surprised to hear about these stories,” Dr. Bernard said in an interview with The New York Times. “The fact that anyone would question such a story is a testament to how out of touch lawmakers and politicians are with reality.”