Boy, 13, accused of raping 10-year-old girl violated house arrest 'hundreds of times'

BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. -- (WPTV) -- Robert Pagano's phone wouldn't stop buzzing. Pagano, a probation officer with the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, is tasked with tracking the ankle monitor on a 13-year-old Boynton Beach boy charged with sexual battery.

“I get readings in the middle of the night, during the morning, in the afternoon, evening,” Pagano testified to alerts he's received notifying him the boy violated the terms of his house arrest.

The boy, along with an 11-year-old boy, is accused of sexually assaulting and threatening a 10-year-old girl in 2017. The boys were arrested by police in June and have since been released on house arrest with ankle monitors as the case moves through the court system.

“I hate to use the term hundreds,” Pagano said in court. “But I'd have to say hundreds of times he's violated the monitor.”

The older boy charged has faced extra court attention for these violations.

The 10-year-old girl carried her secret with her for months until she passed a note to a teacher at school last May. "I said no, but they said if I didn't let them they would beat me up."

She told Boynton Beach Police the boys raped her in an abandoned house, steps away from her own. Even after the boys were arrested, the girl was still afraid.

Contact 5 investigators found the victim's family called police three times accusing the older boy and his siblings of violating a protective order and slashing their car tires.

In the months since their detention, the boys have been evaluated by mental health experts for their capacity to understand a trial.