Douglas Divine has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him. He faces two misdemeanor counts of child cruelty against his girlfriend's 12-year-old and 15-year-old children, as well as two felony counts for allegedly kidnapping and falsely imprisoning her 22-year-old son.
"He held me down and then hit me like four more times," Matthew Silva, the 22-year-old, said.
For more than an hour, Silva detailed the alleged abuse from last June. He testified that Divine had a gun and put him in handcuffs.
"I don't feel like I did anything wrong to be handcuffed, so I was resisting as much as possible," Silva said.
Silva testified that the incident began with a verbal argument and quickly escalated.
He said Divine then ordered him and his younger siblings into a car and took them to their grandfather's house, where Silva yelled at a passerby to call 911.
"I couldn't really agree," Silva said about the car ride. "I already had handcuffs on me."
The young man said his mother, who is a KFSN-TV employee, was on the phone with Divine during part of the incident.
"He said, 'So I put him in cuffs.' And the first thing I hear is, 'Good,'" Silva testified about his mother.
The defense on Friday suggested Silva has a history of drug use, seeming to argue Divine might have feared for his safety.
"You don't recall Mr. Divine telling you that he wasn't going to take the handcuffs off because you already attacked him?" defense attorney Marshall Hodgkins asked.
Divine -- a one-time Fresno police officer -- was the recipient of the department's Life Saving Medal in 2020. He was with the Chowchilla Police Department at the time of the alleged crime, but was later terminated.
On Friday, the 22-year-old testified that during the incident, Divine hit him so hard that he lost vision.
"I saw flashes, I guess, when my eyes were closed," Silva said.
The judge ruled there is enough evidence for prosecutors to take the case to trial. Divine is ordered to return on May 18.
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