A Riverside woman who joined her husband in sexually abusing their two children for years was sentenced Friday to 46 years to life in state prison.
In October, 33-year-old Sabrina Lynn Hawkins pleaded guilty to two counts each of oral copulation of a child and lewd acts on a minor, along with one count of sodomy of a minor. In exchange for her admissions, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office dropped just over a dozen charges against Hawkins.
During a sentencing hearing at the Riverside Hall of Justice Friday, Superior Court Judge Emma Smith certified the plea deal and imposed the terms stipulated by the prosecution and defense.
Joshua Daniel Hawkins, 37, also pleaded guilty in October, admitting 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.
He was sentenced in December to 80 years to life in state prison.
The defendants 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 Department 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 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 surfaced.
Neither defendant had documented prior felony convictions in Riverside County.