Sunday, July 13, 2008

Basement Sex Slave

The world just gets more and more disturbing each day:

Man faces 20 years for keeping sex slave in basement

REDWOOD CITY — A Daly City man accused of housing a teenage girl in the basement of his parents' home and molesting her hundreds of times will face up to 20 years in prison after copping a plea on Wednesday to more than a dozen felony counts of child abuse and domestic violence.

John France Gonzales, a 23-year-old former pharmacy technician, had been charged with 142 felonies, including more than 100 counts of child abuse, many involving sodomy and oral copulation.

Prosecutors slapped Gonzales with every possible felony count to hold him accountable for more than 500 occasions of sexual conduct with the victim, according to Morley Pitt, San Mateo County's assistant district attorney.

But the district attorney's office had always planned to reduce the multiple felony charges against Gonzales as long as he accepted responsibility for his criminal behavior, Pitt said.

Prior to the plea bargain, Gonzales faced up to 132 years in prison, according to the prosecutor. Now he will spend no more than 20 years in prison.

"It's a fair resolution that will enable the victim to hopefully move on with her life and not face the terrible specter of having to testify and relive what went on in her life when she was a teenager," Pitt said.

Gonzales met the girl in 2000, when she was 10 years old and living in San Bruno with her aunt, whom Gonzales was dating, according to former defense attorney Jeffery Neubarth.

Prosecutors say that Gonzales molested the girl for the first time when she was 12 and maintained his relationship with the girl for several years while she lived in San Bruno and with her grandmother in Healdsburg.

Gonzales allegedly took the girl from her grandmother's home in August 2005 and told her that she could not return, eventually moving her into a bedroom at his parents' Daly City home in October 2005, according to prosecutors.
Full Story: Inside Bay Area

No comments: