Business owner admits to getting former Pasco employee drunk, raping her

A Pasco businessman admitted raping an employee he had hired to clean his apartment.

It’s been six years since a woman came forward and accused Gilbert Mendoza Castillo, 51, of raping her after she came to his home to also work as his housekeeper.

Instead, he gave her alcohol until she passed out, and she woke up naked with him sexually assaulting her.

He pleaded guilty to third-degree rape in Franklin County Superior Court recently as part of a plea agreement that allowed him to avoid a more serious charge of second-degree rape.

Mendoza Castillo faces six months to a year in jail at his scheduled July 21 sentencing. The prosecutor plans to ask for the maximum end of the range.

They are also asking for him to receive treatment and be ordered to stay away from his victim.

While prosecutors asked for Mendoza Castillo to be booked into jail before his sentencing, Judge Bronson Brown allowed him to remain out on the $20,000 bond that he posted when he was initially charged.

Court documents said Mendoza Castillo ran a small accounting business and planned to hire one of his employees to clean his home after her hours had been cut at the business.

She was there on April 6 to tour the home, get a key and clean it. While she was there, he bought food for them and started serving her mixed drinks, court documents said.

She told investigators that she remembered talking to Mendoza Castillo, then she remembered waking up the next morning to being sexually assaulted.

She pushed him off and got dressed but was told to wait to leave because Mendoza Castillo’s girlfriend was there. She waited and then left when Mendoza Castillo told her to.

She went to Lourdes Medical Center to be examined after the attack. Pasco police started investigating it two days later.

Police later found that Mendoza Castillo deleted some of the videos from cameras inside his home.