A 39-year-old man sexually assaulted two teenage girls in Tustin, impregnating one of the alleged victims, a prosecutor told jurors Monday, but the defendant’s attorney said there’s no evidence to back up one girl’s claim and the other accuser is lying.
Cristobal Mendez Flores is charged with two counts of rape as well as single counts each of sodomy by force of a victim 14 or older and lewd acts on a child 14 or 15, all felonies.
Flores “forced himself on these two girls,” Deputy District Attorney Evelyn Vasquez told jurors in her opening statement of the trial. “Despite the best efforts to get him to stop he would not.”
One teen lived in an apartment with the defendant while the other lived in a neighboring residence in the same building, Vasquez said.
The two alleged victims — both related to the defendant — emigrated to the U.S. from Guatemala with their mothers, Vasquez said.
Flores offered money and gifts to one of the girls, who was 14 at the time, but when she rejected him he “began to touch her,” the prosecutor said.
One night when they were alone together he “gave her alcohol,” and she ended up in bed in her clothes, Vasquez said. When she woke up in the middle of the night she was nude and Flores was sexually assaulting her, Vasquez said.
The other accuser met the defendant when she was 12 or 13, Vasquez said.
“She was also being harassed by the defendant,” Vasquez said. “When she refused him he didn’t take no for an answer.”
When the alleged victim was 17 in October 2022, he took the teen to a Motel 6 and raped her, Vasquez said.
“She became pregnant by the defendant,” Vasquez said.
The prosecutor referred to the relationships between Flores and his accusers as a “complicated family dynamic.”
The defendant “molested these two girls. … He knew they were vulnerable and in impossible situations but he took what he wanted and didn’t care.”
Flores’ attorney, Hans Corteza of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, said the prosecution’s legal theory “does not make sense.”
The teen who said she was raped at a Motel 6 at 750 El Camino Real came forward to authorities in January 2023, Corteza said.
She said Flores picked her up while she was walking to work at a Little Caesars and took her to the motel, Corteza said. The teen said she was bound with bedsheets before she was sexually assaulted for hours, Corteza said.
In November 2022, the teen was leaving work about 9 p.m. when she saw Flores and tried to run away but he caught up with her and took her to the motel, Corteza said.
While being questioned by police the teen did not seem to understand basic facts about sex, Corteza said.
Flores told police that one of the accusers “used him for sex,” Corteza said.
The defense attorney said she asked for money from the defendant in January 2023 and asked him to delete their text messages. The teen said she asked for money for an ultrasound test, Corteza said.
The accuser also visited the Orange County Jail and asked if she could marry Flores, Corteza said.
Police did not bother trying to get surveillance from the Little Caesars store or from the Motel 6, Corteza said. The investigators did not even try to get the teen’s work schedule or deleted messages, Corteza said.
“The police do not make any effort to be objective,” Corteza said.
“You’re going to see that (the accuser) and Cristobal had an agreement to have sex,” Corteza said.
And now the accuser is “trying to walk back her allegations,” Corteza said.