A Riverside couple who sexually abused their two children for years pleaded guilty Thursday to multiple felony charges.
Joshua Daniel Hawkins, 37, and Sabrina Lynn Hawkins, 33, admitted their crimes just as a preliminary hearing was set to get underway Thursday at the Riverside Hall of Justice. The pair reached separate plea agreements with the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office.
Joshua Hawkins pleaded guilty to four counts of lewd acts on a minor, two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, and one count each of sodomy of a minor, forced oral copulation of a child, forcible penetration of a person under duress or fear and child abuse, as well as a sentence-enhancing allegation of targeting multiple victims in a sex crime.
In exchange for his admissions, prosecutors agreed to drop more than a dozen related charges against the defendant.
His spouse admitted two counts each of oral copulation of a child and lewd acts on a minor, along with one count of sodomy of a minor. Prosecutors also agreed to drop just over a dozen charges against Sabrina Hawkins in exchange for her plea.
Superior Court Judge Emma Smith scheduled a sentencing hearing for Dec. 12 at the Riverside Hall of Justice. The proposed sentence under the plea bargain with Joshua Hawkins is 80 years to life in state prison, while the indicated sentence for Sabrina Hawkins is 40 years to life behind bars.
The defendants are both being held without bail at the Smith Correctional Facility in Banning.
They were arrested following an extensive investigation by the Riverside Police Department’s Sexual Assault-Child Abuse Unit. Joshua Hawkins was taken into custody in November 2021, while his wife was booked into jail three months later.
According to Riverside police Officer Ryan Railsback, detectives received information in early November 2021 pointing to assaults on two children, identified in court documents only as “K.H.” and “J.H.,” in the Orangecrest area of the city.
Railsback said that detectives uncovered Joshua Hawkins had engaged in “ongoing sexual abuse of (his) teenage daughter.”
“During their investigation, detectives learned of additional sexual abuse taking place against the victim’s male sibling, by their stepmother (Sabrina Hawkins),” the police spokesman said.
Court documents indicated that the assaults began in 2014 and continued into the fall of 2021. The circumstances behind the abuse and how the activity was ultimately revealed to authorities were not disclosed.
“The (defendants) have been involved in community and school activities in and around the neighborhood where they lived,” Railsback said, suggesting investigators suspected other minors may have been targeted by the pair, but no evidence of that ever surfaced.
Neither defendant had documented prior felony convictions in Riverside County.