The founder and executive director of an organization that recruited parents for hard-to-adopt foster children is facing trial in state court for allegedly sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl.
Louis A. Martinez, 37, is facing two felony sexual assault charges, one for felony attempted sexual assault and two misdemeanor sexual assaults.
The state says Martinez is also known as David Barber and David Louis.
His lawyer, Myles Breiner, entered not-guilty pleas on Martinez’s behalf at arraignment in state court Thursday.
Circuit Judge Richard Perkins set trial for August.
Martinez remains in custody at Oahu Community Correctional Center, unable to post $150,000 bail. State sheriff deputies arrested him May 31.
When an Oahu grand jury returned an indictment against Martinez last week, Deputy Prosecutor Chastity Imamura told Perkins that Martinez gave the girl three to five shots of hard liquor in October 2011 and intentionally assaulted her after the girl fell asleep. She said the girl has undergone psychological treatment because of the assault and for a period of time was suicidal.
Imamura also told Perkins that Martinez had planned to leave Hawaii this week.
In 2005 Martinez, using the name David Louis, opened Heart Gallery Hawaii. It was the Hawaii chapter of Heart Gallery of America, an organization that encourages people to adopt hard-to-place orphans by taking photographs of the foster children and publicly displaying the pictures. Heart Gallery Hawaii is no longer in operation.
In 2006 Martinez released a book he authored under the name David Louis titled "Scars That Can Heal." He said the book chronicles his experiences growing up in the foster care system on the mainland, going through 30 foster placements and changing schools 19 times. He said he was badly abused in one of his foster homes.
When he "aged out" of the system at 18 while in a juvenile detention facility, he said he was hired as a crisis counselor at the facility.
At the time he released his book, Martinez said he had worked for 10 years on Oahu as a counselor in schools and social care facilities.
In March 2001 he was working as a caregiver under the name Louis Martinez for Nursefinders Inc. when a 20-year-old disabled man drowned at Kailua Beach Park while under his care. The parents of the man sued Martinez and Nursefinders in February 2003. The parties reached a confidential, out-of-court settlement six months later.
In 2009 Aiea residents Joe and Sharon De Moor announced they were adopting Martinez, whom they knew as David Louis, a fellow Jehovah’s Witnesses member, to give him the family he never had.
