'Somebody else is going to get hurt'

'Somebody else is going to get hurt'

By Richard Byrne Reilly
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, November 6, 2004

A 15-year-old high school sophomore says she has to
deal with feelings of anger and guilt every day since
she was raped Sept. 6 in a Dormont tanning salon.

"I'm just mad that I let it happen to me," the girl
said during an interview in her mother's South Hills
home, as her parents and sister looked on. "I don't
want to have to deal with something like this ever
again."

The girl, an athletic 10th-grader with light brown hair
and blue eyes, says she wants her story told so that
girls her age will become more aware of the dangers
around them. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review does not
identify victims of suspected sexual assault.

Nearly two months have passed since the girl says Moshe
Journo, a 39-year-old Israeli national, lured her into
his Dormont clothing store on the pretense of giving
her free clothes and free use of a tanning bed. The
girl says Journo locked the two of them in a tanning
booth, threw her against the bed and raped her.

The assault has thrown the girl and her divorced
parents into a world defined by therapy sessions,
anti-depressants and their anger that Journo was able
to run from the charges against him.

Journo, who posted a $25,000 bond on five
assault-related charges, was allowed to keep his
passport and is believed to have fled to Israel, where
family and friends could be sheltering him.

With her suspected attacker on the run and tormenting
her in her sleep, the teen says she longs for the days
when she could watch "American Idol" and play softball
and soccer with her mind free of the memories of that
September day. Mostly, though, she wants justice -- and
answers from the authorities who she says allowed
Journo to flee.

"How can the police tell me a guy who's not even from
here isn't going to run away when he's from Israel and
is a wife-beater and a criminal?" the girl says,
pointing to her suspected attacker's criminal
background, which includes arrests for stalking, making
terrorist threats and receiving stolen property.

"It doesn't make sense that he's still out there.
Somebody else is going to get hurt," she says.

Rhonda James, executive director of Community Violence
Solutions in Contra Costa County, Calif., said sexual
assault shatters the illusions of girls.

"At her age, girls are thinking there's no way the
world could be this bad," James said. "An experience
such as this will change her outlook forever."

Dormont police arrested Journo Sept. 7, and he posted a
cash bond the next day. He didn't show up for a
preliminary hearing Oct. 14 before an Allegheny County
Common Pleas judge. A warrant for his arrest finally
made it to the Allegheny County Sheriff's Office on
Oct. 27. By then, he was long gone.

The girl's parents are angry that the lead investigator
in the case, Allegheny County police Detective Sean
Kelly, has yet to return their phone calls. But it's
the passport issue that really has them distraught,
they say. That Journo was allowed to keep it, the
girl's father says, amounted to a "get-out-of-jail-free
card." The family is considering a lawsuit against the
county.

"We haven't heard from anybody -- Kelly, nobody," said
the girl's father, a retired corrections officer. "We
get all our information about what's going on through
the newspaper."

Kelly declined to comment.

Magistrate Blaise Larotonda, who set Journo's $25,000
bond, says he lacked authority to seize the passport
and that only a Common Pleas judge can do so. Dormont
police Chief Russ McKibben said at the time his
officers didn't ask for the passport because it was
assumed to be the responsibility of a judge.

McKibben declined to be interviewed for this story.

The girl says she was assaulted after Journo invited
her and her friend into his store for free clothes and
use of a tanning room. The teen says she accepted
Journo's offer and followed him to one tanning booth.
Her friend went into another.

As the girl began to undress, Journo came into the room
and began flirting with her, she said. After offering
her tanning lotion, which she accepted, Journo became
aggressive, throwing her head-first into the tanning
bed and raping her.

"He warned me not to tell anybody what happened," she
said.

The girl and her friend fled to a nearby house, where
her friend's mother called 911. The girl was taken to
nearby St. Clair Hospital, where she was tested.
Dormont police arrested Journo at his store, Mo-Wear,
the next day.

The girl's mother says the family was unprepared for
the emotional tumult that came afterward.

"I don't know how this works," she said. "What do you
do? It's not supposed to happen to your daughter."

The girl wants her days and nights filled with favorite
bands and TV heroes instead of reliving the attack over
and over again. She doesn't want any more looks from
some girls at her school who know about the assault.

She can't and won't rest, she says, until she hears
Journo is in custody.

"What people say about me doesn't bother me," she said.
"It will only make me stronger."


Richard Byrne Reilly can be reached at
or (412) 380-5625.
© 2004 by The Tribune-Review Publishing Co.