Jose Ignacio Avina, a 14-year-old Anaheim boy, will be tried as an adult on charges of raping two boys at knifepoint.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Avina is the youngest person in Orange County ever to be charged as an adult with sexual assault. The district attorney charged him with assaulting two boys, ages 12 and 14, near Ball Junior High School in Anaheim. Occurring separately, there was a six-week time span between incidences.

“Kidnapping for rape, use of a weapon to forcibly sexually assault somebody, having multiple sexual assault victims... all those things warrant charging him as an adult,” said Deputy District Attorney Kal Kaliban.

Avina faces life in prison if convicted on all 12 counts.

Prosecutors believe that four times last year, from Oct. 4 to Nov. 15, Avina approached boys at Ball Road and Euclid Avenue, near the school, and demanded money while threatening them with a knife. In two cases, prosecutors say, he also raped his victims.

The first incident allegedly took place after school Oct. 4, when prosecutors believe Avina forcibly sodomized a 14-year-old boy.

On Oct. 27, Avina is believed to have kidnapped and robbed, but did not rape, a 12-year-old boy before school.

Then, on Nov. 15, Avina allegedly kidnapped, forcibly sodomized and performed oral sex with another 12-year-old boy before school. Within an hour, police said, he failed in an attempt to rob a fourth boy, also 12.

The kidnapping charges reflect allegations that Avina forced some of his victims to go a short distance with him.

Kaliban said he believed Avina may have once been a student at Ball Junior High but no longer attended. Avina was not friends with the alleged victims, Kaliban added, but may have had a passing acquaintance with them. School officials declined to comment.

California law allows prosecutors to charge children as young as 14 as adults if their alleged crimes are punishable by life in prison.

All other cases in Southern California have involved teens who have murdered others, except cases involving teens who gang raped and injured two girls.

The attorney for Avina, however, believes that Avina is really a confused little boy. She believes the boy needs counseling, not a lifetime stay in an adult facility.

The mothers of the boys see if differently. One said her son was “scarred for life.”

Naturally, I see this case quite differently, too. First, like most of my readers, I see rape at knifepoint as a serious crime warranting serious time, counseling and rehab. I don’t care whether the rapist is gay or straight. If prosecutors are going to charge 14-year-olds who rape at knifepoint, then they should treat all perpetrators the same.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case anywhere in the U.S. There are hundreds of cases of teens raping girls. And, of course, there are hundreds of straight male teens practically killing gay males. The victims usually don’t report because they know police won’t investigate and prosecutors won’t file charges.

Ironically, on the same day when Avina’s case made headlines in L.A., buried elsewhere in the Los Angeles Times was a report that the district attorney wouldn’t be filing charges in a case where a girl alleged three members of the Fairfax football team gang raped her on campus in a restroom.

So what should happen to Avina? In the normal course of events, Avina would be sent to a juvenile judge who would have him released into the custody of a mental health facility devoted to juvenile sexual predators. There he would receive meds to control his impulses, counseling from psychiatrists trained in sexually violent predators, and ideally, he would receive some education so that he could lead a productive life upon release.

So I can’t help but think that Avina is being singled out because his victims are males and that his crime involves homosexual rape. And, by engaging in oral copulation with another male, his criminal profile is stigmatized as a “gay” crime.

There’s no adult penal facility that has the capacity for housing a violent gay teen, nor can it provide the kind of counseling and rehab that would prevent Avina from turning into a gay mass murderer (e.g., John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer).

And, because of the nature of his crime(s), Avina could be subjected to rape and even murder.