With his sweeping mustache, bushy hair and piercing, dark eyes, he is the portrait of an angry man. Angry he is, and with good cause. He sits in a prison interview room, his hands in steel cuffs shackled to his waist, and Hidalgo tries to sort out what happened to him. Nothing makes sense. Nothing is the truth.
Nothing is fair.
He was one of 43 people in Wenatchee charged with sexually abusing 60 children. The allegation was complicated by the fact that there had been two different men around Donna's home who were both named Manuel. Donna's older half-sister had lived with one of the two men for a while, but later married Manuel Hidalgo. In his initial police report, Perez indicated Donna was talking about the earlier boyfriend, not Hidalgo. Mike Magnotti and Child Protective Services caseworker Kate Carrow that she, too had been molested.