While the nation and the world are recoiling in horror from the alleged Cleveland trailer park gang rape, a similarly depraved tale in the town of Hudson (just outside of Lufkin) has yet to draw as much ire or attention.
In that case, five men and a juvenile stand accused of raping a 16-year-old Hudson girl on March 5.
The girl has told authorities that the six men assaulted her on a mattress behind a trailer in Hudson. Two of her alleged assailants are father-and-son Clinton Johnson Sr. and Clinton "Bubba" Johnson Jr. The girl claims that Bubba Johnson raped her and forced a beer bottle in her vagina while she was being pinned to the mattress by the other five people on the scene. She also claims that she was fondled by the elder Johnson and the other males present.
The alleged victim made her initial outcry on March 25, when she told a counselor at her school. The men were arrested on April 1.
Celes Rodriguez, mother of the accused Johnson Jr., has proclaimed their innocence. She says her family did have a big party, and that the girl might have been there, but that it happened the day before she claims she was raped. She also says it was pretty much impossible for the girl to have been assaulted behind her trailer, as she would have heard it, and because of the fact that the area is full of chained-up dogs. She also says that Johnson Sr. was not in the area long enough to have done what the girl says he did, and what's more, she says, her boys are good kids. "They're not like that. They're not the perfect kids. They have been in trouble by pulling fire alarms at the school and stuff like that, but I know they didn't do this," Rodriguez told the Lufkin Daily News.
However, a potential witness has come forth and claimed that the girl, who has admitted that she was drunk at the time, might have erred about the location of the alleged gang rape. This person has told police that the alleged assault actually occurred in a wooded location less than a mile away, where reporters from the Lufkin Daily News found two mattresses, a box spring and an unopened bottle of King Cobra malt liquor several weeks after the alleged attack is said to have taken place. The elder Johnson's daughter claims that her brother Bubba did have sex with the girl there, but that it was consensual and that her father was merely an unwitting and disapproving observer of the activity.
"Daddy walked back there, and he wasn't back there very long -- maybe two or three minutes," the woman told the Daily News. "When he came back, he just said Bubba and that girl were having sex on a mattress. He said he grabbed her purse and slung it across the way because it made him mad."
"I'm telling you now, if my daddy would have heard a little girl screaming, he would have stopped it," she said. "My daddy is not that kind of person, and he does not believe in that."
Another relative has said that Bubba boasted to him about his activities. "We were riding around and Bubba told me that he did have sex with that one girl," said Chance McCauley, a 21-year-old nephew of Bubba's sister. "He said he stuck a beer bottle up in her. He was trying to brag about it a little bit. He told me that it did hurt her a little. There were other boys back there. He didn't tell me their names, though."
Both Johnsons are currently locked up and charged with first degree sexual assault. Police are gathering evidence from both alleged crime scenes. More arrests could be made.
Bond for Bubba is $100,000; his daddy's is set at $150,000. Both men could get life in prison if convicted, and if the Daily News is to be believed, it might not be that long a sentence for the elder Johnson, as it reported that he "is dying of terminal cancer that is eating away his face and neck."
