BRIANNE E. BARRA
WESTFIELD – A young city woman who became an adult last September appears to have made a bad decision which may dog her for the rest of her life.
The 18-year-old young woman is facing charges with possible penalties which could theoretically include a life sentence to state prison after she allegedly induced a 15-year-old classmate to provide sexual services for money.
Westfield Det. Juanita Meijas reports in a court document that she was advised by an administrator of a Russell Road based alternative learning program of Westfield High School of a sexual assault involving the woman and a 15-year-old schoolmate.
Meijas reports that she interviewed the 15-year-old victim who said that the incident began in January while she was waiting for the school bus with a schoolmate, Brianne E. Barra, 18, of 116 Montgomery Street.
The girl told Meijas that Barra had told her that she was going to be making marijuana edibles the next day and “if she helped she would get her high”.
She said that when she went to the other girl’s Montgomery Street home the next day “she consumed a marijuana chocolate chip cookie edible, drank beer and consumed cocaine which BARRA provided to her.”
Meijas reports that the girl said that “once she was high, BARRA asked if she wanted to make some money” and said that she could make $60 by performing fellatio for “a guy.” She said that Barra contacted an unknown white male with her cell phone who came to pick up the two girls at Barra’s house.
The girl told Meijas that the man took them in his car to a “dark location near the woods in Westfield” and paid Barra $60. She said Barra then left the vehicle, leaving her alone in the front seat with the man.
The girl said that “she began to cry and said she only performed fellatio because she felt she did not have a choice, and was doing as BARRA told her.”
She said that Barra “gave her $40.00 and kept $20.00 out of the $60.00 the unknown male paid Barra for the sexual act.”
On March 8 Meijas filed a criminal complaint seeking five charges – statutory rape of a child; contributing to the delinquency of a child; facilitating sexual conduct with a child for a fee; inducing a minor to become a prostitute and deriving support from the earnings of a child prostitute – and asked that a warrant be issued.
The court declined to charge Barra for contributing to the delinquency of a child but upheld the other four charges and on March 12 Judge Phillip Contant issued a warrant. On March 16 Barra was in the Westfield police station and was arrested (with a 171 Andover St., Lowell address) by Meijas.
She was arraigned in Westfield District Court on Monday and released on $1,000 cash bail pending a May 1 hearing.
Conviction of a charge of rape of a child can theoretically carry a penalty as severe as “state prison life, or any term of years” .
The other three charges Barra faces are also serious and the district court does not have final jurisdiction for them. Those charges would have to be presented in another court, probably Springfield Superior Court, where incarceration sentences may be longer and are served in state prison instead of a county house of corrections.
And one of the charges, inducing a minor to prostitution, carries a “mandatory minimum sentence of state prison not more than 5 years, not less than 3 years”.
In addition to any sentences imposed by the final court, conviction of any one of three of the four charges she faces would require that she register as a sex offender.
Det. Lt. David Ragazzini, Meijas’ supervisor, said that the investigation is continuing and “there’s a real possibility that other charges will be forthcoming.”
“We’re definitely interested in identifying the male party” he said and said that progress as been made in that effort.
