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SANTA ANA (CNS) - A 53-year-old man was sentenced Friday to nearly 20 years in prison for ongoing sexual relationships with a pair of teenage girls he lived with years apart in Santa Ana, impregnating one of them.
Alejandro Heredia-Santana was convicted Feb. 22 of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor and continuous sexual abuse of a child, both felonies, with a sentencing enhancement for inflicting great bodily injury. He was also convicted of two misdemeanor counts of disobeying domestic relations court orders.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Gassia Apkarian sentenced the defendant to 19 years and eight months in prison, the maximum punishment. Heredia-Santana was given credit for 883 days in custody.
Deputy District Attorney Sarah Rahman said in a sentencing brief that the victims were "particularly vulnerable."
One was between 12 to 15 years old and the other was between 15 to 18, she said.
"Both victims had fraught relationships with their mothers," the prosecutor said.
One of the victims, who had just emigrated from Mexico, did not speak any English, Rahman said.
"Both girls and their mothers were reliant and dependent on the defendant and he took advantage of their youthfulness and naivety to sexually abuse them," Rahman said.
"The defendant impregnated a teenage girl after being caught by her mother and kicking him out of the house," Rahman said. "He violated multiple court orders to continue the relationship with the underage girl, who now has a toddler to raise."
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," 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 victims was sexually abused when she was 15 to 17 years old until the defendant was arrested in March of 2022, Rahman said. That victim gave birth in August 2022 to a daughter the defendant fathered, the prosecutor said.
The other victim was sexually abused when she was 12 to 15 years old in 2005-12, Rahman said.
The "commonality" between the victims 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.
Years later, the defendant began having sex with another woman's daughter, Rahman said.
A psychological expert testified in the trial about Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome to explain why the sex crimes were not immediately reported to authorities, the prosecutor said.
Rahman said in closing arguments that one of the victims "was more concerned about her mother's well-being than she was about herself," explaining that she didn't report the abuse because her mother appeared happy in the relationship.
"She was more concerned about her mother being happy," Rahman said.
The victim came forward when she saw he victimized another girl, Rahman said.