TWO VIEWS OF KIDNAP SUSPECT (Families in conflict over alleged sex with girl, 12)

Rene Escobar, a 20-year-old Westbury man, was arrested and charged with rape and kidnapping onSaturday. 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 itis a Long Island story of Romeo and Juliet. She and her relatives say it was a rape and akidnapping and he belongs in jail. Escobar is 20 and the girl is only 12. They had a yearlongsexual relationship according to his relatives. They said she was in love with him and asked him totake her away from Long Island and that the girl used to escape from her family's home in themiddle of the night and climb through the window of his first floor bedroom in the same house. Thegirl and her family called the Escobar's assertion that she willingly engaged in sex untrue andsaid the full weight of the law should be brought against him. The girl said in an interview thatshe was raped in his bedroom last June and that the family reported the rape to police. Escobar hadfled the area but reappeared in October and began calling her at 3 a.m. on the phone and tellingher to come out of the house or he would start shooting at her family. She came out and he grabbedher by the arm and fled with her. Her parents were asleep and never became aware of what washappening. She said she spent two weeks moving from house to house at gunpoint in Nassau Countywith him until they went to North Carolina. There they were found and she was rescued on November2, he remained on the loose but was arrested last Saturday at his sister's house in New Cassel.

(New York)