Trial of 18-year-old accused of rape starts

The jury trial of an 18-year-old accused of raping a female relative in San Vicente begins, roughly four years after the alleged rape incident.

The jury trial for Kenneth Thomas Blas Kaipat, 18, entered Day 2 yesterday with the prosecution calling over eight witnesses to the stand, among them the responding police officers, the victim’s father, cousins of the defendant, and San Vicente Parish “confirmation” teachers who allegedly witnessed the injuries both the defendant and the victim sustained following the June 2019 assault.

According to the lead prosecutor in this case, assistant attorney general Steve Kessel, the trial is expected to last the whole week and possibly into early next week as there still remains a long list of witnesses who will take the stand.

Kessel said the first two days of testimonies came from relatives of both the defendant and the victim, responding police officers, and nearby witnesses. From today until next week, the prosecution expects to call on expert witnesses to give their testimonies on the evidence found at the scene.

Kaipat is currently facing three counts of sexual assault in the first degree, two counts of sexual assault in the second degree, aggravated assault and battery, assault with a dangerous weapon, strangulation, and burglary.

According to the information against Kaipat, police officers were dispatched to a home in San Vicente on June 2, 2019. Upon arriving, officers saw a female individual walking from the house with her face covered in blood that ran down to her chest while both her eyes were heavily bruised and swollen.

The victim told police that she was taking an afternoon nap when she heard a male voice call her nickname, which only close family members knew.

She said she got up and looked around the house but did not see anyone.

After going back to sleep, she was violently woken up as she was being strangled from behind. She said she struggled with the person and used her hands and fingernails to try and scratch anything she could on the suspect’s body and face. She said she fell to the floor with the person and she could not breathe as she was still being choked.

She said she could not identify the perpetrator as his face was covered with clothing, but noticed the attacker’s complexion was brown. At that point she told police that she thought she was going to die and pretended to go unconscious.

She said she heard the suspect rip off her underwear and that she felt that she was being choked again when she blacked out. She said when she woke up, she was on a bed in “short pants.”

Medical records indicated that the victim sustained a 4-centimeter laceration over her left eyebrow, a large scalp hematoma, bruising to her eyes, one missing tooth and one loose tooth, superficial laceration on her tongue and upper lip, a closed fracture of the mandible, and concussion.

She also sustained multiple abrasions in the back of her head, bruising in both arms, laceration to her ear, and several bruises on the front of both legs.

A sexual assault examination was performed on the victim on the same day of the incident and evidence obtained from the examination was sent to the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia.

Meanwhile, police talked to Kaipat who was reportedly crying and trembling, with scratch marks on the right side of his face.

Kaipat told police that he was walking to a nearby store when something hard hit him on the upper right side of his head, causing him to fall on the ground.

Kaipat said that, while he was on the ground, he heard a male voice threaten him but he could not identify the man because his face was covered.

Kaipat told police that the man was headed to his uncle’s house so he went to the San Vicente Church where he called police.

According to a physician assistant, Kaipat suffered injuries to the right side of his face, his right triceps, and back. The PA also told police that the linear wounds on Kaipat were “consistent with fingernail scratches.” The PA said the injuries Kaipat sustained were contrary to what he stated as having been being struck by a hard object.

Police said the clothes that Kaipat wore appeared to have red stains so they were taken by the Department of Public Safety’s crime scene technicians. Crime scene technicians also obtained swabs of Kaipat’s fingernails on both hands, and swabs of his left and right inner cheeks, and saliva samples.

The evidence was also sent to the FBI laboratory.

On June 2, 2020, the FBI laboratory DNA results indicated that Kaipat was involved in assaulting the victim.

Kaipat was then arrested and tried as a juvenile but the juvenile court later issued an order waiving its juvenile jurisdiction and he is now being tried as an adult.

Jury trial