A 69-year-old man was sentenced Friday to 101 years to life in prison for molesting four girls in Anaheim.<\/p>\n
Tomas Cruz was convicted Aug. 19 of nine felony sex charges involving the girls dating back to 2011, according to court records. He faced a maximum of 193 years to life in prison, prosecutors said in a sentencing brief.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere, the defendant demonstrated a pattern of repeated sexual abuse of multiple children, over the course of multiple years, and involved significant and substantial sexual conduct,\u201d Deputy District Attorney Scott Wooldridge said in a sentencing brief. \u201cThe victims lived in the same house as defendant. He took advantage of his position of trust and authority and instead of providing a loving and safe environment for his grandchildren, he sexually assaulted them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cruz lived with the victims in a multifamily home with 16 relatives, police testified at his preliminary hearing.<\/p>\n
Multiple victims said they were assaulted when they were about 5 years old, Wooldridge said.<\/p>\n
One of the girls said the molestation started when she was 5 years old, police testified. Another girl, who was about seven months younger, said she was also molested, police said.<\/p>\n
Another girl said she was molested, starting when she was 10 years old, and another said she was 6 or 7 years old when she was attacked, police said.<\/p>\n
Cruz\u2019s attorney, Justin Kolacinski of the Orange County Public Defender\u2019s Office, argued for a term of 25 years to life in prison.<\/p>\n
Kolacinski said a court-appointed psychologist concluded that Cruz was a low risk for recidivism. The psychologist said the defendant \u201csuffered after a disabling work injury,\u201d which led to a loss of identity that is common in incest-type cases.<\/p>\n
The defense attorney also said 40 letters were written in support of Cruz for the sentencing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey describe, consistently and independently, a hardworking, humble, respectful, and family-devoted man who helped those around him and had never been known to behave improperly,\u201d Kolacinski wrote in a sentencing brief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 69-year-old man was sentenced Friday to 101 years to life in prison for molesting four girls in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,47389,9515,1637,15727,688],"class_list":["post-521334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-gets","tag-girls","tag-life","tag-molesting","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521334","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=521334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}