San Antonio Man Accused of Impregnating Girl, 13, in Lawsuit

A woman is suing a San Antonio man for more than $1 million, alleging he sexually assaulted her when she was 13, impregnated her by the time she turned 14, and later pressured her into a marriage she says she never wanted. The lawsuit, filed in Bexar County district court, accuses Javier Valadez of seducing the girl next door decades ago and then using a Texas marriage law that, at the time, allowed minors to wed with parental consent. According to KSAT, the plaintiff's attorney, Beauregard Fiegel, said the child was born a month after his client turned 14. Fiegel said the sexual assaults began when his client was 12 and continued through age 16, and he said the girl's mother and Valadez's parents pressured and forced her into marriage at age 16. Public records reviewed by the station show Valadez and the woman are eight years and eight months apart in age, and the plaintiff claims Valadez is nearly nine years older than she is. Bexar County clerk records show Valadez was granted a marriage license to wed the teen a month after her 17th birthday, with the license issued in May 1992. At the time, Texas marriage law allowed a minor to marry with parental permission, and there was no statutory age floor — 16- and 17-year-olds could obtain a license with parental consent, and minors younger than 16 could wed with a court order, according to the same KSAT report. That legal gap didn't close until Texas passed Senate Bill 1705 in 2017, which eliminated the parental-consent exception for minor marriage and required a court order removing the disabilities of minority before a 16- or 17-year-old could wed. Before that reform, an analysis of state health records by the Tahirih Justice Center found that nearly 40,000 children under 18 were married in Texas between 2000 and 2014, with the vast majority involving young girls wed to adult men. The Houston Chronicle later reported that annual child marriages in the state fell from nearly 2,200 in 2009 to zero by 2019 following the tightened rules. Valadez and the woman eventually divorced in 1999. The lawsuit alleges the relationship caused her severe trauma and lasting mental health issues, and she claims the case has nothing to do with an ongoing child support dispute between the two. Her attorney has framed the suit differently, saying it is about justice, being heard, recompense, consequences and accountability. The allegations aren't new to law enforcement. Valadez was indicted in June 1989 for aggravated sexual assault of a child, in a case connected to an incident with a then-13-year-old girl the previous summer, but that criminal case was dismissed after the teen waived prosecution. The Bexar County District Attorney's Office told KSAT it is prohibited by law from discussing the specifics of the 1989 case. San Antonio police opened a fresh investigation into Valadez in 2021, but that inquiry was closed without criminal charges. Then, in early 2024, the girl — by then grown — made an outcry to her elementary school teacher, who reported it to Child Protective Services the same day, as required under Texas's mandated-reporter law. Prosecutors closed that case too, with the district attorney's office saying it could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Public records cited by the station also show Valadez was investigated twice for indecency with a child during the five years before that. Valadez has not been convicted of any sex offense or crime involving a minor. He was also arrested on a misdemeanor family violence charge in 2023, but that case was dismissed in December of that year after prosecutors could not locate a witness. What makes the civil lawsuit possible now, decades after the alleged abuse, is Texas Senate Bill 1167, enacted in 2025, which retroactively eliminated the civil statute of limitations for lawsuits involving serious child sexual offenses. That law followed a 2019 reform, House Bill 3809, which had already expanded the civil filing window for childhood sexual abuse from 15 to 30 years after a victim turns 18, according to Scheiner DWI & Criminal Defense Lawyers. Texas also passed Senate Bill 835, known as Trey's Law, in 2025, retroactively voiding non-disclosure agreements that would otherwise block survivors from speaking publicly about child sexual abuse claims. Criminal law works differently. A 2007 statutory change eliminated the criminal statute of limitations for aggravated sexual assault of a child, but Texas law bars retroactive prosecution if the limitations period had already expired before that change took effect, according to the Neal Davis Law Firm. That constitutional protection against ex post facto prosecution is part of why the decades-old allegations against Valadez have not resulted in new criminal charges, even as the civil case moves forward. The lawsuit is unfolding alongside a bitter, ongoing child custody dispute in Bexar County court. Valadez's attorney, Megan Meyerson, who represents him in both the civil sex assault case and the custody matter, declined to comment when reached by KSAT. Valadez attended an unrelated child custody hearing on Aug. 21, where Judge Cynthia Chapa allowed him to remain in a locked meeting room during proceedings; he stayed silent as a bailiff escorted him to an elevator afterward.ernillill Valadez's partner, Angela Alderete, offered a starkly different account of events, telling the station Valadez married the teen because he felt sorry for her. Alderete described the lawsuit as an attempted cash grab and said the woman owes $50,000 in child support. She also pointed to a judge's October 2024 ruling that the woman had made a false report to CPS and police, and the same order required the woman to pay Valadez more than $12,800 in attorney's fees and expenses. The woman disputes that court order. Meanwhile, the girl's mother has said her daughter is living with someone who harmed her. The plaintiff, now more than 50 years old, maintains that Valadez was a predator who manipulated a child. KSAT is not naming her because the alleged acts occurred when she was a minor. The case adds to a string of recent Bexar County prosecutions and lawsuits involving child abuse allegations, including a 40-year sentence for a San Antonio man convicted of abusing his adopted daughters. It also lands amid a broader national reckoning over child marriage: advocacy group Unchained At Last has found that nearly 315,000 minors were legally married across the United States between 2000 and 2021, with 86 percent being girls wed to adult men who were, on average, four years older than their teenage spouses.