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SANTA ANA (CNS) - A 52-year-old man had ongoing sexual relationships with two teenage girls he lived with years apart in Santa Ana, impregnating one of them, a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday.
Alejandro Heredia-Santana is charged with unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor and continuous sexual abuse of a child, both felonies, with a sentencing enhancement for inflicting great bodily injury, as well as two misdemeanor counts of disobeying domestic relations court orders. Police reported when he was arrested that he was a soccer coach in Santa Ana.
The victims are "two girls who believed he was like a father to them," Deputy District Attorney Sarah Rahman said in her opening statement of the defendant's trial. "Two girls who were manipulated into believing loving him was having sex with him. ... The reality is it wasn't anything more than an opportunity to take advantage of them."
One of the accusers was sexually abused when she was 15 to 17 years old until the defendant was arrested in March of 2022, Rahman said. That alleged victim gave birth in August of 2022 to a daughter the defendant fathered, the prosecutor said.
The other accuser was sexually abused when she was 12 to 15 years old in 2005-2012, Rahman alleged.
The "commonality" between the accusers is "their mothers were in relationships with the defendant," even though he was married to another woman at one point, Rahman said.
"This is a case involving rather complicated relationships," Rahman said.
In the first relationship the defendant began having sex with the girl when she was 12, according to the prosecutor, who said that for two to three years "the two had sex at every opportunity."
At one point the girl's mother walked in on them while the girl was performing a sex act on the defendant, Rahman said.
The abuse was not reported and eventually the girl and her family moved away, the prosecutor said.
Years later, the defendant began having sex with another woman's daughter, Rahman said.
A psychological expert is expected to testify in the trial about Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome to explain why the alleged sex crimes were not immediately reported to authorities, the prosecutor said.
The defendant's attorney, Shahnaz Hussain, declined to make an opening statement at the start of the trial, reserving the right to make one later.