A 36-year-old man sexually assaulted a relative, starting when she was about six and continuing on for another six years, before turning his attention to molesting another female relative in Santa Ana, a prosecutor told jurors Thursday.
While defendant Ruben Tajimaroa’s attorney conceded her client molested the older girl for years, she insisted he did not sexually assault the younger one.
The older victim, now 18, was born in Mexico and was 6 years old when she moved to Santa Ana with her mother and a sibling, according to Deputy District Attorney Whitney Bokosky.
Shortly after the mother and her two daughters moved here, the defendant “started touching” the older girl, Bokosky alleged. In one alleged incident, he took her into a shower and sexually assaulted her, Bokosky said.
“She was confused, she didn’t understand,” Bokosky said. “She didn’t know it was wrong.”
Tajimaroa also allegedly showed the girl pornographic videos and would record the girl on a cell phone when she was nude, Bokosky said.
“He told her he liked watching her when she was naked,” Bokosky alleged.
When the girl was 12 and went on a church retreat she began to realize the conduct was wrong, so she “prayed” for the defendant, Bokosky said. She confronted him and told him to stop molesting her, the prosecutor alleged.
In September of last year, the other girl, who is now 9, told her mother, “my privates hurt, but (Tajimaroa) didn’t touch me,” Bokosky alleged.
That raised the suspicions of the girl’s mother, who took her to a clinic for a checkup, Bokosky said. She was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection, the prosecutor said.
The incident with the younger victim prompted the older girl to tell her mother about the defendant’s alleged molestation, Bokosky said.
When Tajimaroa was arrested in September of last year, police found pornographic videos in the room he was renting, Bokosky said.
When police questioned him he admitted to molesting the older girl, but denied touching the younger one and blamed the infection on “poor hygiene,” Bokosky alleged.
Tajimaroa’s attorney, Lisa Eyanson, said her client “did admit to lewd acts with the older” girl.
But he had a closer relationship with the younger girl and would not molest her, Eyanson said.
“My client’s relationship with the two girls is very different,” the defense attorney said.
Tajimaroa was charged with five counts of lewd acts with a child younger than 14 and two counts of sexual intercourse with a child younger than 10, according to court records.
–City News Service