Waitress testifies about alleged rape

Dabbing at tears, a former waitress at a Suffolk cantina testified Tuesday how a customer raped her on the bar's floor without anyone interfering.

The former waitress, identified only as "Esthela," said that Jasmin Rivera, the manager of Sonidos de La Frontera in Lake Ronkonkoma, pointed her out to the customer with a motion of her thumb.

Speaking through a Spanish interpreter, Esthela said that the unnamed customer then went over to her, "started kissing me . . . threw me to the ground [and] started taking my clothes off.

"I was trying to fight him off . . . I was so dizzy, I did not have the strength, Esthela said, because of the multiple tequila shots the cantina owners required the waitresses to drink.

Under questioning by federal prosecutor Licha Nyiendo, Esthela said that after the attack, the customer left with her skirt draped around his head.

Esthela was the latest government witness to testify against three men accused of running a sexual-slavery ring out of Sonidos, and a second cantina, La Hija del Mariachi in Farmingville.

The three are Antonio Rivera, 35, of Patchogue, Jasmin Rivera's brother; John Whaley, 31, of Bellport; and Jason Villaman, 32, of Brentwood. They are charged with sex trafficking, forced labor and immigration violations.

Jasmin Rivera is cooperating with prosecutors and testifying against her brother and the co-defendants.

Esthela at times struggled with words. When asked if the bar security guards were armed, she said they had, according to the interpreter, "the thing that shoots bullets."

Esthela said she had dropped out of the fourth grade in her native El Salvador when she was 14 years old.

The day after the alleged rape, Esthela said she returned to the cantina, where Jasmin Rivera referred to the rape "and started laughing."

When prosecutor Nyiendo asked Esthela why she did not call the police to report the attack, she replied "because I was illegal."

She said Antonio Rivera had told her that if for any reason "I called the police, they would deport me."

When questioned by Antonio Rivera's lawyer, Glenn Obedin, Esthela acknowledged that his client was not in Sonidos the night of the attack.