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Collazo
Collazo
More than five years after complaints of sexual assault and indecency with a child including sexual contact, a Cleburne, Texas, man has been indicted locally for sexual crimes against children.
Jose Collazo, 23, was indicted on May 15 by a Jefferson County grand jury on two felony charges: aggravated sexual assault of a child, a first-degree felony, and indecency with a child sexual contact, a second-degree felony.
According to the probable cause affidavit, the first victim’s mother reported the incident to Criminal Investigation Division Detective Staci Landor with the Beaumont Police Department on Nov. 20, 2018. At the time of the report, the victim, who had made an outcry to his mother, was 10 years old.
The mother advised Landor her son reported that, beginning at the age of eight and ending at age nine, Collazo would touch him inappropriately and make him do stuff to his body. The incidents were reported to have happened at a family member’s home in Beaumont.
A forensic interview was conducted with the victim at Garth House in addition to a sexual assault examination by a nurse. On both accounts, the victim provided the same account as he did during the forensic interview and as reported by his mother.
Less than a year later, in April 2019, another mother reported the sexual assault of her child to Landor.
The mother reported that her then 12-year-old son told her Collazo raped him. A forensic review was conducted with the victim at the Garth House, where he disclosed that when he was seven or eight years old, while at Collazo’s Beaumont home, the accused sodomized him. Following this disclosure, a sexual assault examination was conducted on the victim, where he provided the same details as he did in the forensic interview.
According to the district attorney’s office, since Collazo was a minor at the time of the alleged crimes, the case was initially handled by the juvenile probation office. Records show several attempts to contact Collazo and his parents both in person and by mail went unanswered for several years, according to the juvenile probation office.
The District Attorney confirmed continual BPD investigation notes on the case were made for over a year before the initial filing in the juvenile system on June 10, 2020. Documents show filings with court signature on them in 2021, as well as records indicating Collazo was unable to be found at the time.
There was not another filing until April 2024. Judge Gordon Friesz with the 317th Court certified Collazo as an adult on May 2 and, according to jail records, he was booked into Jefferson County Jail and released on a $50,000 bond the same day.