Cops: Gang rape of 11-year-old girl taped on cell phone

<Warning: There is an extreme lack of neutral language, terminology, or viewpoints in this post. >

MOUNT CLEMENS -- If five Macomb County teens who took turns having sex with a neighborhood girl didn't know she was 11 then, they knew when they were done, police say.

"They asked" before they left the house, Eastpointe Detective Lt. Leo Borowsky said Wednesday. Police say they recorded the act on a cell phone.

Now, the teens could face up to life in prison if convicted of raping the girl in the basement of an Eastpointe home. The 10-second cell phone video clip, which no longer exists, was passed around the girl's neighborhood until her mother heard about it and reported it to police.

The five suspects, ages 15-19, are charged as adults. They are scheduled to appear for a March 8 pretrial hearing.

Police say the girl was not threatened in the assault they say happened in June. But she felt coerced and intimidated into complying, police say. The legal age for consensual sex in Michigan is 16.

"The sad thing is she was raped by these five men repeatedly. They took turns and coerced her and forced her into this," Macomb County Prosecutor Eric Smith said of the nearly hour-long assault. "It is a horrific case. It sickens me to see this."

After seeing the footage on her cell phone -- which showed the 11-year-old naked from the waist down on top of one of the suspects -- neighbor Caprice Greene said she was confused.

Greene's cell phone was used to record the incident that police say happened in Greene's home on Collinson Avenue, in the basement bedroom of her 15-year-old brother, Reginald Pope Jr. He is among the five suspects.

"I really don't understand it myself," said Greene, 17, who is listed as a witness in the case.

She told police someone swiped her camera phone off its charger and that she stumbled across the clip afterward and recognized the 11-year-old as the "little girl from down the street," according to the police report.

The victim told police that Greene filmed it, police reports say.

Greene told police she deleted the clip to keep from getting in trouble, according to the police report.

Besides Pope, the others charged are Reginald Robinson Brown, 19, of Clinton Township, Careese Adams-Johnson, 16, of Warren, 15-year-old Derrick McGuire of Roseville and 16-year-old Jonathon Powell of Eastpointe.

All five suspects have requested court-appointed attorneys. Police officials said Brown has confessed to the crime and implicated the other members of the group.

Brown has been in trouble with the law before. According to circuit court records, he pleaded guilty last year to two counts of carrying a concealed weapon and is serving one year in the Macomb County Jail.

Brown could not be reached for comment. An attorney for one of the 16-year-old suspects did not return a phone call seeking comment.

All of the younger teens are being held on $50,000 cash bonds, Borowsky said.

News of the rape surfaced while police were investigating the concealed weapon charge, Borowsky said.

Police say it all started June 15 when the girl was chasing her dog near the Collinson house in Eastpointe. Someone invited her inside the house.

"They weren't strangers, and they all knew each other from the neighborhood," Borowsky said. "We're not sure what the group said to her to entice her to joining them in the house. All she would say was they invited her in."

Members of the group then took turns having sex with the young girl, according to police.

"Each of the individuals took turns separately and weren't together in the room when the assault happened," Borowsky said.

At some point, someone used Greene's cell phone camera and recorded part of the assault, Borowsky said. Greene was in and out of the house at the time of the assault, he said.

By early August, news of the incident spread throughout the neighborhood, where the 11-year-old and her mother live.

Neighbor Cornelia Druzinski never saw the footage, but the 83-year-old heard whispers of something happening across the street.

"I didn't know if it was truth or just talk," she said Wednesday.

Druzinski knows one thing for fact: She hasn't seen the 11-year-old walking in the neighborhood since last summer.

News eventually reached the 11-year-old's family. An in-law, first. Then the girl's mother.

She confronted her daughter, who said she had sex with "five boys," according to police reports.

By the time police contacted Greene, who owned the cell phone, the 10-second clip had been deleted and police have been unable to recover the footage.

"We know it existed, though," Borowsky said.

Over the next four months, Eastpointe police investigated the case, and a warrant was issued for Brown and the other members of the group.

The victim's life wasn't threatened and she wasn't beaten, Borowsky said.

"But because of her young age, she felt coerced and intimidated into (having sex)," he said. "There wasn't a threat of harm nor were there any weapons involved."

Though the 10-second phone clip is gone, prosecutors are undaunted. Smith said unlike computers where items can sometimes be recovered after they are deleted, deleted items on cell phones do not last as long.

"When you see five young men take advantage of an 11-year-old girl," Smith said, "it is our job to make sure they pay for it."