‘Witness 9’ tells prosecutors Zimmerman molested her for years
A woman told authorities that while they were children, murder suspect George Zimmerman sexually molested her for a decade, according to prosecution records released today.
The woman, identified only as “witness 9,” said the abuse started when she was six and ended when she was 16. Zimmerman, she said, is about two years older than her.
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In a statement released several weeks ago, witness 9 told Sanford police that Zimmerman does not like blacks. In the audio-recorded interview released today, she reiterated that but without providing specifics.
Zimmerman’s family, she said, “don’t like black people if they don’t act like white people. They like black people if they act white.”
Had she seen George Zimmerman act with hostility toward a black person, she was asked.
No, she said
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Witness 9 told prosecutors the molestation began when she and Zimmerman, who is two years older than her, were young children. Her parents were moving to another state and she and her sister were sent to stay with Zimmerman’s family in Virginia.
“We would all lay in front of the TV” to watch movies, she said, “and he would reach under the blankets and try to do things. … I would try to push him off, but he was bigger and stronger and older,” she said.
He touched her improperly, she said, and at least once, when she was 12, forced her to touch him.
The last sexual encounter, she said, happened when she visited Zimmerman’s family in Lake Mary. He directed her to lay on a bed and began to massage her, she said.
“I just got up and I ran out of the house and I got in my car,” she said, adding that Zimmerman “only chased me to the front door.”
She and her parents eventually confronted Zimmerman at an Orlando-area restaurant, she said. Zimmerman said he was sorry and left, she said.
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While the molestation claims are incendiary, the new information “may be more damaging in the court of public opinion” than in an actual courtroom, said WFTV-Channel 9 legal analyst Bill Sheaffer.
“A jury will likely never hear about that,” Sheaffer said, because it has no relevance to the Feb. 26 shooting of Trayvon Martin, the alleged crime for which Zimmerman is charged. “It should not come into evidence before a jury at all.”
Sheaffer said it’s more likely the state could utilize Witness 9’s claims that Zimmerman is a racist, but even that testimony could be rebutted by the defense calling the numerous other witnesses who have testified to the contrary.
