A Centralia woman convicted of sexually assaulting a child between 2017 and 2020 was released from the Lewis County Jail on Wednesday after she was sentenced to seven months in jail and received credit for time served.
Emilia Perez-Mejia, 21, was arrested and booked into the Lewis County Jail on June 16, 2024, and had been in custody on $50,000 bail up until she entered an In Re Barr plea to one count of third-degree rape on Jan. 10.
An In Re Barr plea allows a defendant to plead guilty to a lesser charge in order to receive the benefit of a plea deal. A Barr plea is different from an Alford plea in that with a Barr plea, the defendant does not necessarily assert innocence.
Perez-Mejia was initially charged with four counts of first-degree rape of a child and two counts of first-degree child molestation on May 30 after the Centralia Police Department completed a year-long investigation into a report of possible sexual misconduct, according to court documents.
An employee at an elementary school in Centralia reported the misconduct on March 23, 2023, after the child’s parents expressed concerns about the child’s mental wellbeing during a parent-teacher conference.
The child reportedly agreed to speak with investigators about the abuse several months after the school employee made a report to law enforcement, according to court documents. A forensic interview with the child took place on June 27, 2023.
Perez-Mejia denied the allegations when she was questioned by a Centralia officer who served her legal papers on July 23, 2023, according to court documents.
She allegedly said she “believed (the child’s parent) was the cause of (the child) saying she’d sexually touched (the child),” according to court documents.
Meija’s conviction in this case requires her to register as a sex offender. She is also prohibited from having contact with children. Contact with her own biological child will be regulated by dependency court orders, according to court documents.
A five-year no-contact order protecting the victim is in place.
