Victim in videotaped sex abuse case speaks out

For more than a decade, Christopher Sena wielded control over his wives and children through intimidation and abuse, according to a new account by one of the children.

He would monitor phone calls and tell the women how to dress. He prohibited them from making friends. He set up video cameras around their trailer, inside and out, watching them at all hours.

If they didn’t obey his orders, the children would be beaten and sexually attacked inside their home in the 6000 block of Yellowstone Avenue, said the accuser, who is now an adult.

After Las Vegas police learned of the abuse allegations in September, a SWAT team served a warrant at the family’s trailer south of Nellis Air Force Base, and Sena was arrested. He remains in jail, with a preliminary hearing scheduled for next month.

In December, after authorities said they had learned that Sena videotaped sexual abuse of the children, his wife, Deborah Sena, and ex-wife, Terrie Sena, also were charged.

But in a nearly 1,000-word letter to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the accuser wrote that the women should not be locked up.

The accuser, who asked not to be identified by age or gender, called Deborah and Terrie Sena “good people” who were “beaten, tortured, threatened and controlled” by Christopher Sena.

“Our father is in jail, where he belongs,” the accuser wrote. Deborah and Terrie Sena “continue to be victims of the state. And the absence of our mothers continues to victimize us kids.”

In February, Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Melissa Saragosa found a “factual dispute” over allegations of violence in the home and ruled that a jury should decide on the 28 charges against Deborah Sena.

“The defense of duress does not negate a defendant’s criminal state of mind when the applicable offense requires the defendant to have acted knowingly or willfully,” the judge said at the time.

Deborah Sena, who is being held at the Clark County Detention Center, has a bail hearing set for March 31, the same day Terrie Sena, who pleaded guilty to one count of sexual assault, is scheduled to be sentenced.

Deborah Sena still faces 28 counts, including sexual assault, incest, child abuse, open or gross lewdness and use of a minor in the production of pornography.

“Unfortunately, Debbie was sometimes forced by Christopher to do bad things,” the accuser wrote. “If Debbie wanted to do bad things, why did she never do them when Christopher was not there forcing her? Christopher did bad things all the time, with or without either mother there. … I have seen the terrified look on Debbie’s face when Christopher was angry. She was always afraid of being hit by my father.”

Defense attorney Kristina Wildeveld has called Deborah Sena a “severely battered woman” and a victim of her husband. While he faces at least 60 counts of child sex abuse, lewdness with a child, sexual assault against a child, and possession of child pornography, Christopher Sena has not been charged with any form of domestic violence against his wife or ex-wife.

Wildeveld said that both Deborah and Terrie Sena and at least one of the children tried to reach out to authorities about abuse at the hands of Christopher Sena several times.

After he learned about attempts to contact Child Protective Services, the children received beatings, according to Wildeveld.

“Christopher would ask them if (Deborah or Terrie Sena) would like to take the punishment instead of us,” the accuser wrote. “And they would take those beatings for us.”

In a voluntary statement to police, Deborah Sena wrote that “Chris made me have sex” with one of the children.

“Ever since that incident, he has emotionally blackmailed me because of it,” she said, and “threatened to kill me if I sent him to jail.”

She said her husband “slapped me twice across the face after backing me up against the wall. He hit me in front of the kids. … Nobody says no to Chris. He has guns … He has told everyone in the house he will kill them if they call the police on him.”

Initially, Deborah Sena, a woman and a child told a family law attorney about the abuse. That attorney contacted police, who seized recording equipment from the home.

While the sexual abuse allegations are severe, experts said the kind of psychological control Christopher Sena is accused of exercising is common.

Lisa Lynn Chapman, director of community relations at Safe Nest, a shelter for victims of domestic violence, said women are often forced to commit crimes at the demand of their abuser.

“Cases like this always pose moral questions about accountability and culpability of actions,” Chapman said. “We as a society need to have an open mind in dealing with extreme cases and why people in extreme situations do not think and act in a rational manner.”

She added, “If the women are taking those beatings for the children, they’re in some ways saving those kids from something worse.”

Daniele Dreitzer, executive director at The Rape Crisis Center, said “extreme manipulation and control is very pervasive and very far reaching.”

She declined to comment on the Sena case directly but said victims of sexual abuse frequently feel helpless and without a means to escape.

“It is often the reason we don’t see victims come forward for a very long time,” Dreitzer said. “They are so disempowered and so much control is taken from them that they just, in some cases, end up in a situation where literally everything they do, at every moment of the day, is controlled by this other person.”

Anyone who suspects abuse should speak up, Dreitzer and Chapman said.

“When you’re in a violent relationship,” Chapman said, “you often don’t see your exits because you’re too busy trying to stay alive from day to day.”

Contact reporter David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker