State court refuses to hear appeal of 2021 sex-crimes convictions in Colonial Heights
RICHMOND – The state Court of Appeals has refused to reverse two sexual battery convictions of a man on a child whose family he shared a house with in Colonial Heights.
In a ruling released Tuesday morning, the court said it would not hear arguments in the 2021 case involving Wilber Alberto Rosa Avalos. Rosa Avalos, now 27, appealed the convictions after a Colonial Heights Circuit Court judge denied defense testimony that the charges were fabricated to block him from getting his green card while simultaneously enhancing the case of the child’s father to get one.
Rosa Avalos, who is imprisoned at the Greensville Correctional Center near Jarratt, was convicted of two counts of aggravated sexual battery after prosecutors claimed he coerced a little girl into fondling him through his clothes on two separate occasions. The incidents reportedly happened in 2018, but the child did not come forward with the accusations until three years later.
According to court documents, the child was living with her father and stepmother in a house owned by the stepmom's mother. Rosa Avalos lived in the house for a brief period in 2018, staying in quarters across from the family on the second floor.
The records indicated that on two different occasions, Rosa Avalos took advantage of other adults being in other parts of the house, particularly the bedrooms and bathrooms, to get the child to rub her hand over his genitalia while he wore pants. Right before the adults returned to the room where they were, Rosa Avalos made the child stop and then promise not to tell anyone what she did.
In his defense, Rosa Avalos had claimed the charges were a ruse against him generated by the child’s family to deny him from getting his green card while helping the girl's father expedite his residency application as the parent of a crime victim. Under federal law, anyone who has non-immigrant status and is directly related to a crime victim may apply for the green card.
During the trial, the child’s grandmother was called as a defense witness. She said on the stand that the child’s father always wanted to have a green card but was unable to obtain one. At the same time, the grandmother said, her son did not want Rosa Avalos to get his card.
When the defense counsel asked her if her son had told her of a way to get that card by claiming his daughter had been violated by Rosa Avalos, the witness claimed he had. At that point, the commonwealth objected to the testimony as hearsay, and the judge concurred. Rosa Avalos’ attorney ended the questioning without countering the objection.
For that sole reason, the Court of Appeals rejected the case.
“Because Rosa Avalos failed to preserve his argument that [the grandmother's] testimony was not hearsay, we do not address it,” the court wrote in its ruling.
For the convictions, Rosa Avalos was given a 40-year prison sentence with 35 years of it suspended. He is eligible for release in 2026, when he will be placed on indefinite probation.
Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is an award-winning journalist who covers breaking news, government and politics. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @BAtkinson_PI.
This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Va. court won't hear appeal of Colonial Heights sex-crime convictions
