- April 18, 2024
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A 36-year-old Palm Coast man was arrested July 28 on charges that he raped a 13-year-old girl in his care in May of 2014.
The man, Waldemar Rivera, had been in the girl’s life for 10 year and “had a history of verbal altercations with her mother,” according to a Sheriff’s Office charging affidavit. He went by the nickname “Macho” and smoked weed regularly, sometimes with the young teen, the victim told investigators.
The victim told an investigator during a forensic interview that on May 11, 2014, Rivera bought her a pack of cigarettes, smoked marijuana with her, took her to dinner and gave her alcohol, then brought her back to a house and raped her.
When the two arrived at the house, the victim told investigators, Rivera sat down next to her on a couch and asked her, “Do you want to feel something you have never felt before?”
The girl thought he had a different kind of drug and asked him what he was talking about, she told investigators, and he replied by telling her to take off her shorts, according to the affidavit.
She told him, “No,” and he replied, “I am sorry, I didn’t mean to,” but then stood up, pushed back the recliner couch seat she was sitting on and “surrounds himself all on top of her,” according to the affidavit.
The girl told investigators he then removed her clothes and performed a sex act on her. She told investigators that she “froze up and started freaking out,” then told him to stop.
He did, and she dressed and went outside to smoke a cigarette. He followed her out, according to the affidavit, and said he was sorry and that “she must hate him now,” and she replied that they were “OK.” She said she feared his anger and did not want to do anything that would make him react violently, according to the affidavit.
Rivera repeatedly told her to hit him, the girl told the investigator, but she said no because “she has seen him do that to her mother and it turns out bad. So she kept calm and focused on keeping calm so she could get out of the house,” according to the affidavit.
When Rivera fell asleep watching TV, the girl grabbed his phone and called a friend to come get her. Then she called her mother, while her friend’s mother called law enforcement. The girl then ran out of the house.
A deputy who showed up at the house to check into a report of a possible sexual battery knocked and got no response, though he could see a TV on inside and lights come on in one of the rooms.
Rivera finally came to the door, saying he’d been in the shower. Deputies checked it: It was dry. Then he changed his story and said he’d been about to get into the shower.
When deputies asked him where the girl was, he said she was inside. She wasn’t. Deputies were filling out missing person paperwork on the girl when the girl’s friend’s mother called and said the 13-year-old had arrived at her house crying and shoeless and saying that Rivera had sexually assaulted her.
Law enforcement officers picked up the girl. A warrant was issued for Rivera’s arrest on June 26, 2015 and he was arrested at about 6:09 a.m. June 28 and taken to the Flagler County jail. He is being held on $100,000 bond.
