OTHELLO, Wash. — Eight months after a 3-year-old girl was brought in to be evaluated for a suspected rape, the child’s mother and her boyfriend were arrested for withholding information about the incident.
According to a Facebook post from the Adams County Sheriff’s Office, a 28-year-old Othello man named Edgar Fermin Sales-Andres was arrested on October 17 for the accused child rape in the first degree. His girlfriend, 37-year-old Juana Santos-Gutierrez– the child’s mother — was arrested under suspicion of rendering criminal assistance in the first degree.
Santos-Gutierrez brought her 3-year-old daughter to a clinic on February 23, 2022 following reports of sexual abuse of a minor on the 300-block of S Reynolds Rd in Othello. Medical staff coordinated with deputies, who contacted the mother about the events leading up to this instance.
Authorities say that she refused to cooperate or identify the man accused of abusing the child. However, they later determined that Sales-Andres was the primary suspect and he’d been living with them at the time of the incident.
It took approximately eight months to gather enough information for the police to make an arrest, but once they did, both the mother and boyfriend were brought into custody. Adams County Sheriff Wagner confirmed that child protective services have been activated to help with the fallout from this investigation and ensure the child is safe.
“We are grateful for the medical staff that reported this to law enforcement, they are mandatory reporters,” Sheriff Wagner said.
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