{"id":137979,"date":"2026-01-17T18:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T18:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/137979\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T18:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T18:08:08","slug":"man-sentenced-to-102-years-to-life-in-prison-for-molesting-five-nieces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/137979\/","title":{"rendered":"Man sentenced to 102 years to life in prison for molesting five nieces"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Gavel,<\/a>A gavel. (File photo courtesy UC Berkeley Law)<\/p>\n

A man convicted by an El Cajon jury of molesting five of his nieces over the course of several years was sentenced Friday to 102 years to life in state prison.<\/p>\n

Joaquin Ruiz, 45, was found guilty in August of 18 counts related to sex acts upon children, as well as possession of child sex abuse material.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said the victims were between the ages of 5 and 16 and that, in addition to physical abuse, Ruiz also placed hidden cameras in his bathrooms to capture videos of the victims.<\/p>\n

According to the San Diego County District Attorney\u2019s Office<\/a>, the initial allegations against Ruiz were recanted by the victim after her parents and Ruiz\u2019s wife did not believe her due to Ruiz\u2019s reputation within the family as a devoutly religious person.<\/p>\n

However, another niece also accused Ruiz, leading to a public confrontation between Ruiz and the girl\u2019s mother and sister, which prompted police to respond to the scene and then investigate the allegations, the D.A.\u2019s Office stated.<\/p>\n

San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan said in a statement, \u201cPredators who steal the innocence of a child, creating a lifetime of trauma, have no place in our society. Today\u2019s sentence is a message to sexual abusers that you will be held to account, and you will not hide in the shadows, no matter what your affiliations are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013City News Service<\/p>\n

READ NEXT\n\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A gavel. (File photo courtesy UC Berkeley Law) A man convicted by an El Cajon jury of molesting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[2305,70020,4164,70021,74,7678,76,75,37000],"class_list":["post-137979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-children","tag-chilren","tag-guilty","tag-joaquin-ruiz","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county-district-attorneys-office","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-sex-abuse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}