A 38-year-old Louisville woman faces charges of sexual assault on a child after police discovered she had a long-term relationship with a teen that produced two children and began when the boy was 13.
Police allege in court documents that Irene Marie Gomez was 32 when she and the teen, who is now 18, conceived their first child together. The couple conceived another child three years later, according to the records.
Gomez, in a telephone interview Tuesday, said the couple’s children, a boy and a girl, are now 4 and 1.
She said she and the teen, whom she said she keeps in close contact with, are trying to raise the children and Gomez’s three other children as a normal family.
“I think they’re just trying to break up a family now,” Gomez said. “We’ve already been together for a long time. And the kids are hurting now more than us.”
Police first discovered the relationship on Nov. 11, when they responded to a domestic-violence call at Gomez’s home after Gomez said she and the teen got into an argument.
According to court records, a detective soon began comparing ages for the couple and their children and became suspicious.
Efforts to reach a Louisville police spokesman for comment late Tuesday were unsuccessful.
Gomez said she first met the teen “on the street” in 2001 and said the boy told her he was 18. She said he always held a full-time job, looked and acted mature and had multiple identification cards listing different ages.
She said she resisted the teen’s advances, but he was persistent, writing her love letters and waiting outside her house for her to come home after work.
Gomez said the relationship with the teen began shortly after her mother died.
“I was not in the right frame of mind at all,” Gomez said. “I was considering not staying on this earth myself after my mom died. I just feel that he helped me through a really bad situation. There was nobody else there for me.”
Police issued an arrest warrant for Gomez in late February. Gomez turned herself in last week, then bonded out.
As a condition of her bond, Gomez is not to have any contact with the teen.
Gomez said she last talked to the teen about a week ago. She said the teen told her he would do everything in his power to get her out of the charges.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
