Samuel Aponte-Rodriguez, 26, of Campbell, looks toward the gallery Wednesday during his trial in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. He is charged with two counts of rape.

YOUNGSTOWN — The mother of the child Samuel R. Aponte-Rodriguez is accused of raping in late 2022 at a home in Campbell testified Wednesday that her daughter told her the stepson of her daughter’s babysitter had “touched” her the previous day while the girl was at the babysitter’s house.

“It was a shock. I had never heard her say that before,” the woman testified. “I just felt like I had to go home. I was all over the place, like I needed to figure this out.”

She was with her daughter at an urgent care in Boardman at the time. She had taken the girl to the urgent care to have her checked for a urinary tract infection because a relative who picked the child up at the babysitter’s house told the mother that the girl complained of discomfort in that area of her body.

While still at urgent care, the mother asked the girl, “Did anybody touch you down there? Because I always tell her ‘Don’t let nobody touch you down there,'” she said from the witness stand.

She was not allowed to testify what the girl said, but the mother testified that “It was shocking because she never said that before.”

When Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor Kevin Day asked the mother who the girl said had touched her, the mother testified that it was Aponte-Rodriguez. She also testified that Aponte-Rodriguez was regularly at the babysitter’s house when her daughter was being watched there.

Day asked her how it felt when her daughter told her that someone “touched her,” and the woman said, “Devastating,” adding “What do you do? What exactly do you do in that situation” as she got emotional.

Two days after that, the mother spoke to the girl again about the incident and filmed a 30-second video of the child telling her about it again.

“I sat her down and asked her to see if she repeated everything she had told me that day,” the mother testified.

Then the woman took the child to Akron Children’s Mahoning Valley in Boardman and told someone there what the girl said. Campbell police arrived, and an investigation began. The girl has not returned to the babysitter’s house since then, the mother said.

Under cross examination by Michael Kivlighen, Aponte-Rodriguez’s attorney, the woman testified that she did not tell anyone at the urgent care about the girl saying someone had touched her. The mother also agreed that the girl never had any blood in her underwear.

Kivlighen asked the woman if she remembered the girl telling her that the girl had been “bleeding all over,” and the woman said she did not remember that. The woman was shown the video she filmed of her daughter, and then agreed that the girl did say that.

In opening statements, Day told the jury in the courtroom of Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge John Durkin that the girl’s mother took her child to be babysat at the home of a friend of her aunt’s while the mother went to work. But in late 2022, the girl told her mother the babysitter’s stepson, Aponte-Rodriguez was “touching her.”

He said a physician will testify that a cut was found on the girl’s private area during an examination at Akron Children’s. The girl also told authorities about 10 days later that Aponte-Rodriguez touched her several times.

In testimony Wednesday, a social worker at Akron Children’s testified that no “rape kit” could be performed on the child because the alleged offenses occurred more than 72 hours before the child was taken to the hospital.

In his opening statement, Kivlighen told the jury there is no physical evidence in the case, such as DNA. There also will be no eyewitness testimony. He added that the girl also accused someone else, a boy, of committing offenses against her. That came out during an interview at the Child Advocacy Center at Akron Children’s, Kivlighen said.

“She did not identify” Aponte-Rodriguez, Kivlighen said. “And what happened after that? Nothing,” Kivlighen said. “Was there any additional investigation on who this (boy) was? Did the police follow up on this? No.”

The trial resumes this morning.