A 50-year-old man was acquitted Monday of charges of repeatedly molesting a girl while he was dating her mother in La Habra.
Mario Rodriguez Vasquez was found not guilty of multiple counts of sexual assaults or attempted sexual assaults of his accuser. Prosecutors accused him of molesting the girl from 2017 through the end of 2019.
Deputy District Attorney Sean Riordan said in his opening statement of the trial that the girl’s mother began dating Vasquez when the girl was 12. The girl accused him of touching her when they lived apart and continued when the girl’s mother moved into an apartment with Vasquez’s relatives, Riordan said.
Vasquez’s attorney, Jamie Kim of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, said in her opening statement that when the girl came forth with the allegations, “she was troubled” and “had the attention of social workers” and others who offered to help and yet never reported she was molested.
“She had opportunities to report it,” Kim said. “She had resources offered to help her and at no point in the time leading up to January 2020 did she report it.”
The defense attorney added, “There was a history of lying, there were self-serving reasons, shifting of blame, shifting of attention.”
The day before she came forward with the allegations, the accuser had skipped class and was scolded by her mother, Kim said. The girl didn’t come home that night, the attorney said.
The girl showed up at her aunt’s home the following morning and, as she was walking to school with her mother threatening to call police, she confided in her cousin, Kim said.
Vasquez voluntarily spoke to La Habra Police Department detectives Nicholas Backlit and Paul Martinez, Kim said. He brought along a “support person,” who was there to help bail him out if necessary, Kim said.
“He says from the onset, `I haven’t done anything,’ ” Kim said. “Mr. Vasquez was there to assert his innocence.”
But the detectives “were not there to accept his explanations… They’re not seeking information, but affirmation of what was told to them by (the accuser),” Kim said.
The detectives turned the questioning “into an interrogation,” and used various legal techniques and claimed to have forensic evidence such as DNA and a videotaped encounter, Kim said.
When the detectives left the room, the defendant and the other man discussed telling the police what they wanted to hear so they could arrange for bail, Kim said.