An Orange County Superior Court judge this week — for the second time — tossed a sexual assault case against a 90-year-old Irvine landlord accused of twice sexually assaulting a tenant due to a prognosis that the defendant has dementia and is not likely to improve enough to assist in his defense, according to court records obtained Friday.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Huy Nguyen on Wednesday granted defense attorney Alisha Montoro’s motion to dismiss two felony counts apiece of sexual penetration by foreign object and force and sexual battery against Hossein Masoudfar. On Feb. 2, Nguyen rejected a motion to dismiss the charges with prejudice, and prosecutors refiled a case against him that day.
Masoudfar was originally charged in December 2017. He was accused of assaulting the then-36-year-old victim on July 14, 2016, and again on May 7, 2017.
Masoudfar posted $100,000 bail and has been free since Dec. 5, 2017.
In February 2021, prosecutors offered to dismiss three of the felony counts and reduce the other to a misdemeanor if the defendant pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of sexual battery, which would have put him on three years of informal probation and had him register as a sex offender for 10 years, according to court records.
But Masoudfar’s attorney at the time quit the case due to medical reasons and the Public Defender’s Office took it over. In March 2022, his defense attorneys declared a doubt about his ability to assist in his defense, which suspended the criminal proceedings.
The defendant was found to be incompetent to stand trial and a doctor was hired to determine whether he should be placed on a probate conservatorship, according to court records.
Dr. David Walsh said the defendant at the time did not pose a substantial danger because he was then 89 “frail, no longer drives, rarely leaves his home, needs assistance to walk and suffers from a degenerative cognitive disease,” according to court records.
Two experts concluded that the defendant was incompetent to stand trial because of his dementia, Montoro said. It was later determined that it would be unlikely Masoudfar would ever regain mental competency because dementia is considered a degenerative disease, she said.
According to testimony in his preliminary hearing, police said the victim had moved in with the defendant and his wife in July 2016 and that she described her relationship with him as “terrifying.”
The defendant continuously asked her to have sex with him but she refused, police said.
One day when she was washing dishes, the defendant came up from behind and sexually assaulted her, police alleged.
Before the 2017 alleged attack, the victim said she went to the garage to get some pots to make breakfast when the defendant followed her in and attacked her, police said.
In both cases, the victim fought him off, police said.