Southwest Arkansas Radio Radio Stations KMTB, KNAS and KBHC in Nashville, Arkansas
On July 29, 2019, a Howard County, Arkansas jury took only twenty (20) minutes to find forty-eight (48) year old Orlando A. Dominguez, of Mineral Springs, Arkansas, guilty of three (3) counts of Rape of victims under the age of Fourteen (14) years.
The Howard County Sheriff’s Department began investigating the case on January 20, 2019, after Dominguez’s eighteen (18) year old daughter came in to report that Dominguez was calling her, asking her not to cheat on him with her boyfriend and stating he wanted to keep having sex day and night with him (“Dominguez”). This conversation was overheard by the victim’s mother. When questioned, the victim told Investigator Joey Davis that Dominguez had been forcing her to have sex with him since she was twelve (12) years old. The victim told investigators from the time she was fifteen (15) until eighteen (18), Dominguez would rape her on a daily basis, and it just became part of her life.
The Arkansas Department of Human Services removed the remaining two (2) minor daughters from the home and placed them, along with another sibling, into a foster home. After being removed to a safe environment, the fourteen (14) and twelve (12) year old daughters of Dominguez divulged to their foster parents that their father had also raped them. Joey Davis along with the Crimes Against Children investigators were able to complete the case against Dominguez, where in he was charged for raping his middle daughter on three separate (3) occasions from the age of twelve (12) to thirteen (13), and lastly raping his youngest daughter at the age of eleven (11), all within the family home in Mineral Springs, Arkansas.
All three (3) victims, along with a Licensed Practical Therapist/Forensic Interviewer from Texarkana, Arkansas, testified during the trial. Dominguez chose not to testify. However, the jury was able to hear the telephone call Dominguez made from the Howard County Jail to the one of the victims, repeatedly requesting that she go to his lawyer and tell him it only happened twice to her.
The jury of three (3) women and nine (9) men took only thirteen (13) minutes to reach a decision as to the Defendant’s punishment. Judge Charles Yeargan sentenced Orlando. A. Dominguez to three (3) life sentences, all to run consecutive to each other.
The case was prosecuted by the Ninth-West Judicial District’s elected Prosecutor, Bryan L. Chesshir, who was assisted by his Howard County Deputy Prosecutor, Aaron Brasel.
“It is a crying shame when a child has to grow up in a home of sexual abuse. However, a child being raised to accept being raped as a part of every day life, as if it is like just going to school or doing your chores on a daily basis, is unimaginable. I could not think of a worse betrayal to these young girls than their own father violently raping them continuously over a six (6) year period. God put fathers on this earth to raise and protect their children. There is no place in our society for a human who will do this to his own children. The jury gave the Dominguez what he deserved.”
Bryan L. Chesshir
Prosecuting Attorney
Ninth-West District of Arkansas
