A 31-year-old man charged with sexually assaulting two girls in Anaheim has filed a federal lawsuit alleging the jail classification system leaves him open to beatings by fellow inmates.
Daniel Velazquez Jr. is charged with two counts of lewd acts on a child ages 14 or 15 as well as single counts each of forcible oral copulation on a minor 14 or older and sodomy by force of a victim 14 or older, all felonies. He also faces a misdemeanor count of resisting arrest.
Velazquez is accused of attacking the victims Feb. 11 of last year. He pled not guilty in September.
Velazquez filed a lawsuit Tuesday in federal court alleging Orange County sheriff’s deputies failed to protect him while he has been in custody.
Velazquez was arrested in June and was “openly classified … as a sex offender, to which other inmates took notice,” according to the lawsuit.
The inmate’s attorney, Dick Herman, said that classification puts his client at risk because other inmates often attack accused sex offenders.
Velazquez has been attacked four times since his arrest, Herman said.
“He has daily confrontations, fights constantly,” he said. “When they give a prisoner that kind of ID, it invites an attack.”
The sheriff’s department has a faulty classification system, Herman said. “It’s not a system that protects him.” .
Inmates facing child sex crime charges “should be separated, they should be isolated,” Herman said.
Herman compared it to the Oct. 5, 2006 fatal beating of 41-year-old John Chamberlain, who was in custody on misdemeanor possession of child pornography charges.
Velazquez has asked for a temporary restraining order challenging the classification system, but that request has not yet been accepted or rejected, Herman said.
An Orange County Sheriff’s Department declined comment on the lawsuit.