A 57-year-old man who repeatedly sexually assaulted his granddaughter in Temecula was convicted Friday of felony charges.
After two days of deliberations, a Riverside jury found Jose B. Fabian guilty of four counts of lewd acts on a child under 10 years old.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Jack Lucky scheduled a sentencing hearing for Jan. 18 at the Riverside Hall of Justice.
The defendant, who is being held without bail at the Byrd Detention Center in Murrieta, is facing life in prison with the possibility of parole.
According to the District Attorney’s Office, Fabian molested the girl, identified in court documents only as “G.R.,” when she visited him and his wife at their residence near Old Town between January 2014 and April 2017.
Deputy District Attorney Edward Jensen said that the assaults began with the defendant groping the girl’s privates and instructing her to reciprocate.
After the touching, Fabian took the victim to a bedroom and stripped her, then attempted to insert himself, but the pain was too much for G.R., and the defendant stopped, according to court papers filed by Jensen.
Fabian also orally copulated the girl and compelled her to kiss him open-mouth, both of which made the child ill, the prosecutor said.
He said that when she was 8 years old, the victim finally informed her parents about what had occurred, not realizing when she was younger that her grandfather’s behavior was wrong. Her mother and father immediately contacted sheriff’s deputies.
In the ensuing investigation, one of Fabian’s nieces also alleged that she had been groped and forced to touch the defendant intimately before she turned 10 years old. But after several interviews, the now-22-year-old woman recanted her statements, saying nothing illegal had occurred, according to the prosecution.
Fabian was arrested without incident on April 28, 2017.
He had no documented prior felony convictions.