A 53-year-old man has pleaded guilty and was immediately sentenced to eight years in prison for sexually assaulting a female relative for six years in Orange.
The victim came forward in April 2019 alleging that Aaron Gamido Jimenez had been sexually assaulting her since she was about 8 years old, police said in court papers.
The victim said the first attack came in 2013 after she had watched a “scary movie” with him and slept in the defendant’s room because she was frightened, police said.
The girl said he molested her while she was sleeping and she pretended to stay asleep during the attack, police said.
The girl said in a later attack she thought she heard a camera taking pictures, police said.
The girl alleged in other attacks she had fallen asleep on a couch and woke up to the defendant assaulting her, police said. The girl also alleged that she believed he was drugging her with melatonin, police said.
The girl’s mother found a photo of the victim partially nude on his phone, triggering the investigation, police said.
Jimenez pleaded guilty Friday to a felony count of sexual penetration of an unconscious victim. As part of the negotiated plea deal with prosecutors, felony counts of sexual penetration of a child older than 14 by foreign object and force, forcible oral copulation and rape were dismissed.
The defendant was ordered to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.