Woman who rode with deputy as teen talks about experience

A woman who as a 16-year-old was found to have been subjected to inappropriate sexual talk by a Sedgwick County sheriff’s deputy in his patrol car says a detective told her that other people are alleging that they were victims of Thomas Delgado.

Details of Delgado’s past are surfacing this week after the sheriff’s office announced Friday that he was arrested on suspicion of official misconduct, rape, sexual battery and sexual exploitation of a child.

During an interview at a sheriff’s investigation office on Wednesday, the detective “just said that there were other people coming forward,” said the woman, now 21. “She (the detective) said it feels like she’s putting together a puzzle that keeps growing.

“She told me that this is way bigger than what my dad and I realized,” the woman said Thursday.

In an interview with The Eagle this week, the woman gave her account of the 2011 ride with Delgado, saying he invited her to ride in his patrol car with him so she could vent about her problems. The Eagle is not naming the woman because she was a minor at the time of the alleged sexual advances by Delgado.

Sheriff Jeff Easter this week confirmed there was an internal sheriff’s investigation of the incident in late 2011, before he became sheriff. That internal investigation found that Delgado spoke inappropriately about sex with the 16-year-old while she was riding with him in the patrol car, Easter said. After the internal investigation, Delgado was reassigned from patrol to the sheriff’s offender registration unit. Delgado took a patrol job with the Valley Center Police Department in April 2014. The woman’s father has told The Eagle that as of 2011, he considered Delgado to be a mentor helping his then-teenage daughter deal with her problems.

Delgado, who is out on bond and who has not been charged, resigned his position as a Valley Center police sergeant the same day as his arrest.

He could not be reached for comment.

Easter said Thursday that the investigation of Delgado will not be presented to prosecutors this week because interviews are still being conducted and evidence is still being collected.

On Wednesday, Valley Center City Administrator Scott Hildebrand said that police Chief Mark Hephner had resigned and that the resignation was related to allegations about Delgado.

The woman described Delgado, now 49, as being a likeable person when she first became acquainted with him several years ago. Delgado worked a beat in southeast Sedgwick County. He dealt with her as a deputy after she ran away and was caught.

As a teen, she could relate to the deputy because he could be entertaining, she said. He “cussed like a sailor,” he was nice, and “he just seemed genuinely concerned about me.” He gave her what felt like innocent hugs after she ran away, she said. He would send texts to her to check up on her, she said.

In late 2011, he called her about going on the ride-along, she said. A ride-along is where a civilian can travel along with an officer to see the world of policing.

But during the three- to four-hour ride, he starting talking about his sex life, the woman said.

As Delgado talked about sex, she said, “I was really anxious and nervous. I was embarrassed. It’s pathetic the way a teen thinks.” At the time, as a 16-year-old, she kept thinking that she didn’t want to make him uncomfortable or upset him, she said.

And she said that she was asking herself: “What if he makes a move?”

As Delgado talked, she kept texting a boyfriend whom she was not supposed to be communicating with, she said. Her texts to the boyfriend formed a play-by-play description of what Delgado was saying, she said. Her texts were later given to a sheriff’s detective who did the internal investigation of Delgado, her father says. The internal investigation began after the father filed a complaint once he heard from the boyfriend about the texts, the father told The Eagle.

Delgado saw her texting, she said. She said she remembered that Delgado told her not to text to her boyfriend, that she instead needed to be talking with Delgado in the patrol car.

At one point during the ride, she said, Delgado said he would like to have sex with her and that they needed “to hang out again.”

She said she remembers thinking that she could get into trouble if she didn’t respond a certain way to the deputy.

“I was a troubled child, and he was a police officer who had sway, obviously.”

The woman said she managed to work through her problems as a teenager and is doing well now, taking university classes and working with people who have intellectual disabilities.

This story was originally published December 15, 2016 at 4:34 PM with the headline "Woman who rode with deputy as teen talks about experience."