Rene Escobar, a 20-year-old Westbury man, was arrested and charged with rape and kidnapping on Saturday. He was being held in Nassau County jail with no bail set on the kidnapping charges, meaning he cannot be released at least until after a court hearing Thursday. His relatives say it is a Long Island story of Romeo and Juliet. She and her relatives say it was a rape and a kidnapping and he belongs in jail. Escobar is 20 and the girl is only 12. They had a yearlong sexual relationship according to his relatives. They said she was in love with him and asked him to take her away from Long Island and that the girl used to escape from her family's home in the middle of the night and climb through the window of his first floor bedroom in the same house. The girl and her family called the Escobar's assertion that she willingly engaged in sex untrue and said the full weight of the law should be brought against him. The girl said in an interview that she was raped in his bedroom last June and that the family reported the rape to police. Escobar had fled the area but reappeared in October and began calling her at 3 a.m. on the phone and telling her to come out of the house or he would start shooting at her family. She came out and he grabbed her by the arm and fled with her. Her parents were asleep and never became aware of what was happening. She said she spent two weeks moving from house to house at gunpoint in Nassau County with him until they went to North Carolina. There they were found and she was rescued on November 2, he remained on the loose but was arrested last Saturday at his sister's house in New Cassel.
(New York)