A 45-year-old Lake Elsinore man who allegedly repeatedly sexually assaulted two girls — one of them for almost eight years — was charged Wednesday with more than two dozen felony offenses.
Selvin Exequiel Garcia Yax was arrested Saturday following a Riverside County Sheriff’s Department investigation.
Yax is charged with seven counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, eight counts of sodomy of a minor, six counts each of forced oral copulation of a child and child rape, three counts of lewd acts on a minor, one count of kidnapping to commit rape and sentence-enhancing allegations of targeting multiple victims in a sex crime.
Yax made his initial court appearance before Superior Court Judge Judith Clark, who appointed him a public defender and scheduled his arraignment for Oct. 13 at the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta.
Clark also increased Yax’s bail to $2 million from $1 million. He’s being held at the Benoit Detention Center in Indio.
According to sheriff’s Sgt. Jeff Reese, detectives were alerted Friday to the alleged abuse, prompting them to interview Yax at his residence in the 400 block of Pottery Street, where he was taken into custody without incident in the predawn hours Saturday.
No details were disclosed regarding the nature of the defendant’s relationship, if any, to the two girls, identified in court documents only by their initials, “Y.C.” and “N.C.”
Documents indicated that Y.C. was the principal victim, allegedly suffering re-occurring abuse at the hands of the defendant from the time she was 8 years old until she was 15, roughly between 2011 and 2019.
N.C. was allegedly assaulted several times this year, according to documents.
The circumstances behind the alleged attacks, including how and why Yax was able to perpetrate them on so many occasions without being found out, were not provided.
Yax has no documented prior felony convictions in Riverside County. If convicted, he could face life in prison without the possibility of parole.