Jury deliberations begin in 'Rusty' Torres molestation trial
Former Yankee Rosendo Torres, who is facing trial in the sexual molestation of an 8-year-old girl in 2012, leaves a courtroom in Mineola on July 17, 2014 after trial proceedings. Credit: Howard Schnapp
A jury began deliberating Tuesday in the sex abuse trial of ex-Yankee outfielder Rosendo "Rusty" Torres, asking near the end of the day to review testimony of one of two girls prosecutors said he had inappropriately touched.
Jurors watched a videotape interview of one alleged victim Tuesday and Wednesday will hear the second girl's testimony of two instances of alleged abuse in a van.
"I definitely got the feeling that the jury is giving it their full consideration," defense attorney Troy A. Smith said after court had recessed.
Torres, 65, of Massapequa, is on trial in Mineola for felony crimes, including seven counts of sex abuse involving girls younger than 11, while he was a youth baseball coach for the Town of Oyster Bay.
Torres is accused of having inappropriate contact with two girls while coaching them in Plainview -- in an action the girls knew as "bumping."
"That's a child's word . . . but that's not what it was," Assistant District Attorney D.J. Rosenbaum said Tuesday in closing statements.
Rosenbaum said Torres repeatedly thrust and grinded his private parts against the girls like a "dog in heat."
Prosecutors said one victim was abused several times in April and May 2012, until the third-grader told her parents on May 7, 2012.
Torres, who was suspended from his job, inappropriately touched the girl in a town van and also exposed himself outside the van, prosecutors said.
The same girl drew a male genitalia in the police station and crossed it out before her May 7, 2012, interview there, a Nassau County detective testified two weeks ago.
Rosenbaum yesterday put the drawing up on a screen and traced the image with her index finger. "You can see it . . . clear as day," she said.
Prosecutors said Torres began abusing the second victim in kindergarten in 2008 and continued until May 2012 when she was in the third grade.
"She, at the age of 5, became the object of somebody's sexual desire," Rosenbaum said. Pointing to Torres, she said: "His desire."
In an interview, Smith said "police led a highly suggestive interview" with the girl after the initial allegation.
Smith said her May 9, 2012 video interview -- which jurors watched again -- and testimony show "all she's talking about is playing baseball."
