The Office of the Attorney General has re-filed the charges against a Rota police officer accused of sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl.<\/p>\n
Assistant attorney general Betsy Weintraub, counsel for the government, re-filed the information last Jan. 25, less than two months after dropping the case.<\/p>\n
The new information charged 49-year-old Melvin Maratita Manglona with two counts of sexual abuse of a minor in the first degree and one count of disturbing the peace. These are the same charges in the previous information the OAG dismissed.<\/p>\n
Manglona was directed to respond to the charges before Superior Court Associate Judge Joseph N. Camacho on Rota on Feb. 27 at 9am.<\/p>\n
Last Dec. 15, Weintraub moved to dismiss the charges against Manglona without prejudice, which meant the government could re-file the case in the future.<\/p>\n
In the government\u2019s voluntary dismissal of the case, Weintraub said the alleged victim and the witnesses reside on Rota, and there had been no opportunity to interview them in person.<\/p>\n
Weintraub said the government has received information regarding the alleged victim that requires further investigation to determine whether prosecuting Manglona is in the best interest of justice.<\/p>\n
Prior to the case\u2019s dismissal, Weintraub filed a motion to reset the trial, saying she is going off-island. Camacho denied the motion, saying the jury summons have already been issued for 750 potential jurors on Rota.<\/p>\n
The OAG alleged that Manglona sexually abused the 14-year-old girl last July and Aug. 11, 2016, on Rota. The girl told police that the defendant has been sexually abusing her since she was 9. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Office of the Attorney General has re-filed the charges against a Rota police officer…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2626,8528,2074,86],"class_list":["post-246050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-attorney-general","tag-betsy-weintraub","tag-last-dec","tag-oag"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}