EVERETT — A Snohomish County jury was told Tuesday about a video recording that raises questions about a former Monroe police sergeant’s insistence he had no sexual attraction to the teenaged babysitter he secretly filmed taking showers at his home.
On the video, Carlos Alberto Martinez reportedly told the young woman how much he “loved” her breasts, and how he had “imagined them,” even before she was sexually mature.
The tape’s existence became public as deputy prosecutor Lisa Paul spent much of a day questioning Martinez about his connection to his family’s former babysitter, now 26. They met when she was 10, and a student in an anti-drug class Martinez taught at her elementary school.
Paul told Superior Court Judge Michael Downes she hopes to play the tape for jurors Wednesday morning as testimony wraps up in the trial.
Martinez, 61, is charged with voyeurism and possession of depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct, both felonies.
He testified Friday there was nothing sexual about his 2004 decision to hide cameras in a bathroom at his Monroe home to secretly record the babysitter. Martinez said he took the step out of concern that the girl, then 15, might have been cutting herself.
Martinez also told jurors there was no sexual contact or even attraction on his part until early 2007. By then, she was 18 and a senior in high school. He was 52, and married.
On Tuesday, lawyers on both sides focused jurors’ attentions on excerpts from a vast digital library of sexually explicit videos, photographs and messages between Martinez and the young woman.
Much of that content — thousands of photographs and dozens of videos — was created when the two were living together as a couple in Texas. It was gathered up during the investigation that in 2013 led to Martinez facing charges in Washington.
Paul on Tuesday played audio from a video recording of sex between Martinez and the young woman. The former babysitter was in handcuffs, intoxicated and unwilling to engage in a particular sex act. She began crying.
The handcuff chain could be heard rattling as Martinez released her and began to reassure her she was OK.
The young woman told him she’d been raped when she was 10 — something she’s already testified never happened.
In a near whisper, Martinez responded, “Right before I met you. Right before you came to me.”
When Paul asked him to explain, Martinez said he was referencing the girl’s attendance in his Drug Abuse Resistance Education class years before, nothing more.
Wasn’t he interested in the girl since she was a small child?
Martinez insisted that wasn’t so.
Paul then asked about the recording where Martinez talked of his love for the girl’s breasts, even before she underwent puberty.
Martinez said he’d listened to the tape, too, and didn’t hear himself making such a statement.
The prosecutor later asked the former babysitter whether Martinez had ever said such things. She testified he said he liked her breasts, even before she had breasts.
Defense attorney Mark Mestel asked the young woman to explain why she provided Martinez with videos of her showering and engaging in sexual conduct.
Because that’s what Martinez liked, she said.
As had happened in her earlier testimony, however, the young woman said she couldn’t remember many details. At a couple of points Tuesday, Mestel refreshed her memory by showing her excerpts from explicit videos she made.
He also grilled her about her motivation in calling police in Texas to complain about Martinez.
Jurors have already been told that happened after the pair split up. She told Mestel he was wrong in suggesting she was trying to get even with Martinez for letting the young woman’s deeply religious family know that she’d been lying to them for years about her reasons for moving to Texas.
Under questioning by Mestel, Martinez described being pursued by the young woman across a period of years, including an incident in 2006 when she was 17 and disrobed during a visit to his hotel room.
Martinez said he didn’t touch her and instead sent her home.
The young woman told jurors that was true, but insisted she and Martinez had sex the next day.
Martinez told jurors that he broke off the relationship in 2011 because it no longer worked for him. In the end the connection between him and the young woman came down to two things, he said: “Sex. And my vanity.”
Scott North: 425-339-3431; north@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @snorthnews.
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