One Year Ago Today (April 28, 2023)…A 57-year-old man was sentenced to eight years in prison for sexually assaulting a girl while living in Fullerton with her mother, whom he met when she was 13.
Jeffrey Jennings was convicted April 3 of two counts of lewd or lascivious acts on a minor and acquitted of two counts of the same crimes for the victim’s sister. Jurors also found true a sentencing enhancement for substantial sexual conduct with a victim younger than 14.
Jennings was given credit for 54 days in custody and ordered to register as a sex offender.
One victim testified the abuse began when she was about 4 years old and would occur when her mother was at work as her sister, who was about 2 1/2 years older, was at school.
The victim, who is now a nurse, said persistent nightmares she started having in part motivated her to come forward decades after the alleged abuse.
She recalled how Jennings moved in with her mother and sister when she was about 4. He would watch her and was active in her life, she said.
“As time went on I did look at him as a father figure,” she said, tearfully.
“Did you love him?” Deputy District Attorney Scott Wooldridge asked her.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Are there happy memories with Jeff?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she responded.
But then she recounted the abuse, which often started with him asking if she wanted a popsicle, she said. She recalled how he would take her into her mother’s bed, hold her legs open and commit a sex act on her as she watched herself from a dresser mirror.
“I would kind of look into the mirror and stare at myself because I didn’t realize what was happening,” she said.
She said one time while on her bunk bed, he “had his pants down, wearing his boxers,” and, “he grabbed my head and tried to get me to perform oral sex on him.” She refused, she said.
“I would just say no and cry,” she testified. “I knew it wasn’t right, but I also didn’t know if it was wrong.”
When the prosecutor asked how many times it happened, she said, “I want to say more than three, but less than 11.”
After each incident, Jennings would warn her not to say anything, she testified.
“I was always told if I told my mom I would get in trouble,” she said. “I would be taken away from my mom and I would never see her again.”
The abuse stopped when they moved to another home in Fullerton. Then Jennings and her mother broke up, she said.
The family would sometimes see Jennings around town, such as at the grocery store, and though they were encouraged to say hello to him the two girls never did, she testified.
Asked why she didn’t come forward sooner, she said, “I thought I would get in trouble,” she said.
“Did you feel like it was your fault?” the prosecutor asked.
“I still feel that way,” she said. “I buried it deep in my mind and went about trying to have a normal life.”
When she started working as a nanny, “I started having nightmares,” she said.
“He would come back, we would be back in that house,” she said of the nightmares. “He would try to do more.”
Her girlfriend, whom she lives with, encouraged her to tell her mother about the nightmares and abuse, she testified.
When she told her mother what had happened, she “whispered it into her ear,” she said. “She cried and held me and my step dad came into the kitchen.”
Her mother called her sister, who was living out of state, and she said she was also abused by the defendant, the accuser testified.
The prosecutor asked her if she was motivated financially with the allegations.
“No,” she said. “I just want an explanation.”
According to police testimony during the defendant’s preliminary hearing, Jennings met the alleged victim’s mother when she was 13 and working in a video store. The defendant was 21 at the time, police said.
The two lost touch about a year later and reconnected when she was an adult through a mutual friend, police said. They broke up again because of his drug use, police alleged.
Jennings was accused of molesting the other sister in much the same way when they had moved to the new home, police alleged.
One of the accusers made a covert call to Jennings before he was arrested, Wooldridge said.
“He was being accused of the most disgusting things,” Wooldridge said. “And he says, `I’m sorry. I don’t have any recollection of that. I was drinking all the time.”’
The prosecutor said the defendant “Doesn’t say things like, `No, are you crazy? That didn’t happen.”’
The prosecutor said the allegations from the accusers “coupled with the relationship between the defendant with the mother when she was the age of 13” would prove the defendant’s guilt.
Defense attorney Peter Mininsohn said there was no forensic evidence or witnesses in the case.
“It requires the defendant to prove a negative,” Mininsohn said. “A good story can’t be defeated by the facts. And, ladies and gentlemen, it’s a good story and it’s told by storytellers.”
The accusers “are going to tell you they don’t know exactly when it happened,” Mininsohn said. “They’re going to tell you each of their stories is exactly the same.”
The defense attorney added, “They didn’t tell each other what happened … not until 20 years later.”
He noted that when the allegations finally surfaced, the family took several days before filing a police report.
“This is not `Dateline.’ This is not `CSI,”’ Mininsohn said. “This is TMZ and the Enquirer.”