A 39-year-old man was convicted Wednesday of sexually assaulting two teenage girls in Tustin, impregnating one of the victims.
Cristobal Mendez Flores was convicted of 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 is scheduled to be sentenced July 17.
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 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 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.
Vasquez said in her closing arguments of the trial that the victim didn’t believe she had any rights and her confusion about the basic facts of sex were rooted in her not being an English speaker.
Vasquez said the defendant gave her a smart phone, which excited her, but she felt “something was off” and as he hugged her he was aroused.
Later, the defendant “grabbed her butt,” and when she asked him if he would like it if someone did that to his daughter if he had one, “He looked her in the face and did it again,” Vasquez said.
Another time, he gave the victim a few hundred dollars and a condom, Vasquez said.
“These are two girls who were putting up boundaries and a defendant just going right through them,” Vasquez said.
Flores also teased one of the victims about taking her virginity, Vasquez said.
The prosecutor cited another time when he followed the victim around their home exposing himself saying, “Do you know who this belongs to?”
Vasquez argued that the two victims, who have since moved to Ohio, had nothing to gain by flying back to Santa Ana to testify in the trial.