By JOE SEELIG

SEBRING — Two Sebring men remained in Highlands County Jail being held without bond Wednesday accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl.
Gerado Garay-Gamez, 28, of 4710 Seventh St., in the Highlands Homes subdivision, was charged with five counts of sexual battery.
Alberto Vazquez-Chavero, 18, of the same address, was charged with one count of sexual battery.

According to the arrest report the teen sneaked out of her home at about 1 a.m. March 17 to “hang out with a friend.”
They in turn drove to a friend’s home in the Highlands Homes subdivision.

“After trying unsuccessfully to get her friend to sneak out of her house, she and (her male friend) went to an unknown house on Seventh Street in Highlands Homes,” Sebring police investigator Larry Carmody wrote in his report.

The victim and her friend went to a small room on the side of the main house. The victim needed to use a bathroom.
Once inside the bathroom, which she described as very dirty, her friend told her from outside the door he was leaving to go to a friend’s house and would be back.

The girl yelled to him not to go and tried to leave the bathroom. She was confronted by a man she later identified as Garay-Gamez, blocking the doorway.
The victim told police, Garay-Gamez pushed her back inside the bathroom, where he assaulted her. Then Vazquez-Chavero entered the bathroom and assaulted her, she reported.

Garay-Gamez tried to assault her again, but she was able to elbow him in the head, she reported. He fell back into the bath tub and she escaped.
Police were called and found the house. They detained eight potential suspects. After a sex-crimes examination, the victim identified Garay-Gamez and Vazquez-Chavero, the report stated.

Garay-Gamez claimed that he paid for consensual sex with the victim in the bathroom. Vazquez-Chavero said he saw Gamez having sex with the victim through the bathroom door, but denied having sex with her at all, the report stated.
Jeff Roth, director of the Children’s Advocacy Center said Wednesday that preserving the victim’s anonymity is important.

“The thing they fear most is that their peers will find out what happened to them,” said Roth.
His facility provides a victim’s advocate who helps the victim navigate the system, with referrals to counseling and free services when there is a documented crime through the Victims of Crime Act. The center’s multi-disciplinary team has access to the center 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Roth said.

Sometimes victims are taken first to local emergency rooms, he said.
There doesn’t appear to be any pattern indicating a rise or fall of forcible sex offenses according to statistics for the last 12-plus years from the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office.

Sex crimes are listed by year as follows: 1995, 59; 1996, 73; 1997, 74; 1998, 54; 1999, 47; 2000, 52; 2001, 27; 2002, 46; 2003, 68; 2004, 52; 2005, 64; 2006, 49; and up to March 20, 2007 there have been 13 forcible sex offenses.