A 32-year-old man was convicted Tuesday of sexually assaulting a 5-year-old relative and making a video recording of one of the attacks.
Dariel Ibarra-Lopez was convicted of sexual intercourse with a child 10 years or younger, using an underage victim for obscene matter and possession and control of child pornography, all felonies.
Orange County sheriff’s investigators received a tip about 63 files of child pornography online on May 7, 2024, prosecutors wrote in a trial brief. An investigator reported that one file showed a victim of about 5 years old being sexually assaulted in a car in a 5-minute video, prosecutors said.
Other online files related to the assault showed videos of attacks on girls between 2 and 10 years old, prosecutors said.
Investigators tracked down the victim’s mother, who said she had sought a restraining order that wasn’t served against the defendant nine months earlier to protect the girl and the rest of her family, prosecutors said. The woman said she sought the restraining order because Ibarra-Lopez was sending her “long, inappropriate text messages” about the girl saying he wanted to have sex with her in front of the girl and later threatened to sexually assault the girl, prosecutors said.
The defendant, who was living with his parents in Westminster at the time of his arrest, told police he had five children and no relationship with any of them because both mothers had restraining orders against him, prosecutors said.
Ibarra-Lopez told investigators that he believed the victim was 4 or 5 at the time of the assault, prosecutors said.
Ibarra-Lopez is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 1.