A former boys’ choir vocal coach accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old boy in Orange County and fleeing the country more than a decade ago to avoid trial made his initial appearance Monday before a judge in Santa Ana.
Roger Alan Giese, 43, was captured in England in March 2015 and spent three years fighting extradition. He was booked into Orange County Jail on Friday and was ordered held on $60 million bail pending his arraignment, which was rescheduled to Aug. 29.
The defendant’s attorney declined comment outside the courtroom.
Giese met the alleged victim, who was 13 at the time, in his capacity as a vocal coach for the All-American Boys Chorus in Buena Park in 1998, according to the FBI. When he failed to show up for his trial on five counts of lewd acts on a child, 10 counts of lewd acts on a child 14 to 15, three counts of sexual penetration by a foreign object of a minor and one count of oral copulation of a minor, a judge issued an arrest warrant on March 12, 2007.
“Giese convinced the boy’s parents to allow him to stay at their home for two weeks while he looked for a new apartment,” according to the warrant. “During this two weeks he shared a bedroom with the minor, and he developed a sexual relationship with the boy. These activities continued until 1999. In 2002, the victim revealed what had happened to him, and Giese was arrested and charged.”
An Orange County district attorney’s investigator contacted the Department of Homeland Security on March 13, 2007, when records showed Giese had caught a flight two days earlier from Charlotte, North Carolina, to the Cayman Islands, according to the FBI warrant.
Giese was found three years ago in Hampshire, working for a public relations firm and living under a different name with a woman who did not know his true identity.
Giese’s challenge of his extradition failed in June in Britain’s high court, the BBC reported, and in July, the court refused to let him appeal the decision.