Jose Ortega, Convicted Rapist, Is Innocent, Victim Says 22 Years Later

A rape victim in Texas admitted this week that the man who spent five years in jail for assaulting her is innocent.

In an exclusive interview with KRIS-TV, an unidentified woman said that her story of getting raped when she was 11 years old is true. The crime just wasn't committed by Jose Ortega, she said.

Ortega was convicted of the 1990 rape along with his brother, Daniel, who was given ten years of probation.

The victim, however, says Daniel Ortega is responsible, not Jose.

"I can recall details of that incident and it's something that's stuck with me all these years. There's nothing in my mind that tells me Jose is a predator," she told the station.

But the woman's testimony won't have any affect on Jose Ortega's current case. The woman's revelation was made shortly before a hearing Monday on charges that Ortega failed to register as a sex offender in Corpus Christi.

Judge Tom Greenwell agreed with prosecutors that the victim's new story is irrelevant to that hearing, so she was not allowed to testify.

Ortega was sentenced to ten years in prison Monday for the failure to register charge.

In 1990, the victim told a school counselor about several incidents with the Ortegas. In an affidavit, she alleged, "Joe took off all my clothes. He took off just his pants and underwear. He touched me all over and kissed me."

The station reports that she remembers mentioning Daniel in that conversation, but not Jose.

"He was just another person in the neighborhood. I knew who he was but we never had anything to do with each other," she said.

Jose Ortega plans to appeal the judge's decision on Monday not to allow the victim to testify.

Last month, Cassandra Kennedy admitted that her father didn't rape her when she was 11 years old in 2001. She said she made up the story because she was upset about her parents' divorce.