One Year Ago Today (March 1, 2022)…A 35-year-old man has been sentenced to 100 years to life in prison for molesting a girl in Lake Forest, according to records obtained.
Gerardo Reyeslopez was convicted in October of four counts of sexual intercourse or sodomy on a child 10 years or younger and seven counts of lewd or lascivious acts on a minor younger than 14, all felonies. He was sentenced Friday.
Co-defendant Rut Mirian Rogel-Morales, 37, pleaded guilty and was sentenced March 23 to 15 years in prison to seven counts of lewd or lascivious acts on a minor younger than 14, according to court records.
Reyeslopez was arrested Nov. 6, 2015, when Orange County sheriff’s deputies responded about 3 p.m. to a complaint of a suspicious vehicle in a no-parking zone in Lake Forest with its windows covered, according to prosecutors in court records.
Reyeslopez was zipping up his pants as he tumbled out of the Nissan Sentra to respond to deputies knocking on the window. He falsely claimed the victim was his daughter and that he was married to Rogel-Morales, who denied that, but who is related to the girl.
The girl, who was 12, told deputies she was sexually assaulted by Reyeslopez two or three times a week and that the molestation started when she was 8, prosecutors said. Deputies also found lewd photos of the girl on Reyeslopez’s phone, prosecutors said.
Reyeslopez’s wife described the father of a 6-year-old son in an appeal for mercy at sentencing as a “hardworking family man, who prided himself on caring for his family emotionally and financially,” according to court records. His attorney said in court papers that he had “dedicated himself to studying the Bible.”