A former high school principal and volleyball coach was sentenced to eight years in prison on sex charges in Los Angeles, according to Wave Newspapers.
The 41-year-old former principal of Firebaugh High School was sentenced by a Compton Superior Court Judge. ABC7 News reported he pleaded no contest to 10 counts of lewd acts on children who were 14 or 15 years old. He was convicted of molesting the children between 1996 and 2007, according to a deputy district attorney.
This is one of those cases where alleged victims began surfacing with alarming regularity after the allegations were made public. One of the jobs of an Orange County criminal defense lawyer in such cases is to keep prosecutors from piling on charges and to keep a client from pleading guilty to something that cannot be proven. In this case, a number of allegations were dropped because the statutes of limitation had expired.
Court documents reveal the defendant was principal at Firebaugh from 2005 to 2009, where three of the victims were students. Several of the girls made statements in court. One victim said she made allegations against the defendant in 1995, while he worked at a Catholic school in Los Angeles.
The eight-year sentence was also the maximum the defendant could receive under a plea bargain worked out with prosecutors. Three of the four victims played on volleyball teams he coached. He resigned as principal of Firebaugh before leaving for the Philippines in May 2009. He was arrested at LAX upon returning that July.
If you need to speak to a sexual harassment attorney in Orange County, contact the California Legal Team at (310) 497-0321 to discuss your rights.
