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In about an hour Wednesday, a jury acquitted a McHenry man who had been accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl last year during a party in McCullom Lake.
Alexis Javier Mendez, 28, who had been in McHenry County jail since his arrest in April 2024, was found not guilty of criminal sexual assault with force, a Class 1 felony, and aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a person between the ages 13 and 16. Had he been convicted, he could have faced 15 years in prison.
The jury found Mendez not guilty after hearing the girl testify Tuesday that during a visit to her mother’s McCullom Lake home, after falling sleeping in her mother’s bed, she woke up to Mendez holding her down with his hands and body weight and sexually assaulting her.
“I froze. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t yell,” the girl, now 16, said.
But Mendez’s attorney, Mary Cole, made the point to jurors that there was no DNA, physical evidence or photos that proved Mendez was guilty and that the case is a “he said, she said” situation. Cole also said that though the state’s witnesses – including a school resource officer and a sexual assault nurse examiner – would “echo” the girl’s testimony, there were no witnesses providing actual evidence of guilt.
While being examined after reporting the allegation, the girl declined to allow a sex assault nurse examiner perform an internal examination. Cole asserted that was because the girl knew that nothing would be found to indicate an assault.
Two jurors interviewed after the acquittal – a 34-year-old Lake in the Hills man and a 66-year-old Algonquin woman – said all the jurors were in agreement right away. They said there was a lack of investigation and physical evidence to back up the girl’s testimony.
During that testimony, the girl spoke quietly, took long pauses and cried. Mendez kept his head down nearly the entire hour she was on the stand, appearing to take notes.
The girl testified that when Mendez was finished, he apologized and said it wouldn’t happen again. She said her arms and pelvic area hurt, and that he came back to the room to tell her his Uber had arrived and to “take care.” She said she eventually got up and went to the bathroom and took a shower. She said there was blood in her underwear.
In opening statements, Assistant State’s Attorney Elizabeth Vonau told jurors the girl “was terrified” and that Mendez “pinned her down” and “overpowered her with his weight.” Vonau said the girl described “feeling like her body was not her own.”
When the girl got home to her father’s house, she took the clothes that she said Mendez had taken off her and threw them into the trash, Vonau said. Her father testified she was sad and quiet.
Authorities said Mendez had been attending a party in the lower level of the girl’s mother’s house that night. A woman who was at the party had testified that Mendez had gone upstairs three times to where the girl slept. Each time, the woman testified, she called him to come back downstairs and told him the girl was underage and to leave her alone.
The alleged acts, for which Mendez has now been acquitted, occurred during the early hours of March 17, 2024. Two days later, the girl reported the allegations after a friend saw her crying in a bathroom at school; the girl then told a school social worker, a resource officer, the SANE nurse who examined her and then police, according to testimony and authorities.
Vonau said no DNA or physical evidence was found on the girl because the girl had showered three times before the examination at the hospital. She declined the internal examination, Vonau said, because she had just been traumatized by a sexual assault.
In opening statements, Cole told jurors that by the end of the trial, their hearts would be “a little bit broken,” but not because Mendez assaulted the girl.
“There were people who were supposed to be there for [her] but they were not,” Cole said.
She claimed the girl made up the story because she was upset for other reasons and wanted “to get attention from her parents.”
After the acquittal, Cole said: “Alexis has always persisted in his innocence. He has been in custody for a year and three months on a case where he persisted in his innocence. But we are really grateful the jury did their job, paid attention, analyzed the evidence. More importantly, they waited to hear all the evidence before making their decision.”
Cole continued that even though Mendez disagreed with all the allegations, he never said anything unkind or out of anger about his accuser.
“He always took the position that she was making a cry for help for something, even if it had nothing to do with him, and he had compassion for that. He’s a good guy,” Cole said.