People v. Torres CA2/7

California Court of Appeal·Decided June 17, 2014·No. B246363·Unpublished

Opinion

Filed 6/17/14 P. v. Torres CA2/7 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION SEVEN

THE PEOPLE, B246363

Plaintiff and Respondent, (Los Angeles County Super. Ct. No. VA124164) v.

RAYMOND TORRES,

Defendant and Appellant.

APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Robert J. Higa, Judge. Reversed. Nancy J. King, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant. Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Assistant Attorney General, Dana M. Ali and Toni R. Johns Estaville, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent. ____________________ Raymond Torres was convicted after a jury trial of two counts of committing forcible lewd acts on a child under 14 years of age, two counts of forcible penetration with a foreign object and one count of forcible oral copulation. The victim was Torres’s stepdaughter, Gabrielle. Torres contends there is insufficient evidence he used force to commit any of the offenses and, even if there was, Gabrielle’s general testimony about the sexual abuse was insufficient to support convictions for more than one count each of forcible lewd conduct and forcible penetration. We agree there is insufficient evidence Torres used force to commit the lewd acts, reverse the convictions on those two counts and direct the trial court to enter judgment finding Torres guilty of two counts of the lesser included offense of committing a lewd act on a child under 14. Torres’s convictions on the other three counts are affirmed, and the matter is remanded for resentencing consistent with this opinion. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND 1. The Information Torres was charged by information with committing multiple sexual offenses against his daughter Krystal as well as Gabrielle. With respect to Krystal, Torres was charged with three counts of forcible sexual penetration with a foreign object (Pen. Code, 1 § 289, subd. (a)(1)(A)) (counts 1, 2 and 3); and one count of forcible rape (§ 261, subd. (a)(2)) (count 4). As to Gabrielle, he was charged with three counts of committing lewd acts by force on a child under 14 (§ 288, subd. (b)(1)) (counts 5, 6 and 12); two counts of forcible rape (§ 261, subd. (a)(2)) (counts 7 and 8); two counts of forcible sexual penetration with a foreign object (§ 289, subd. (a)(1)(A)) (counts 9 and 10); and one count of forcible oral copulation (§ 288a, subd. (c)(2)) (count 11). It was specially alleged there were multiple victims within the meaning of the “One Strike Law.” (§ 667.61, subds. (b), (e).) Torres pleaded not guilty and denied the special allegation.

1 Statutory references are to the Penal Code.

2 2. The Evidence at Trial a. Gabrielle’s testimony Twenty-one years old at the time of trial, Gabrielle testified Torres became part of her family when she was two years old. She considered Torres her father and described him as a “good dad.” When Gabrielle was nine years old, Krystal, who was 15 or 16 and had been living with her mother, moved into the home Gabrielle shared with Torres, her mother, sister and brother on Gard Avenue in Norwalk. After Krystal moved in, according to Gabrielle, everything changed: Torres became “angry and just weird” although Krystal was the target of the brunt of his anger. Torres also began touching Gabrielle over her clothing in a “more aggressive, more touching-type” way while they were playing, which they did “all the time.” Gabrielle explained, “[I]t would be like a tickling-type play, if I was laying down he would touch in between my legs, tickle inside of your thigh but it would go from the inside of my thigh up . . . to touch . . . my vagina.” When this occurred, Gabrielle would move Torres’s hand and stop playing. When Gabrielle was 12 years old the family, except Krystal, moved into a one-bedroom apartment on Imperial Highway in Norwalk. Torres would watch Gabrielle and her siblings, both of whom are autistic, during the day while their mother worked. After the move Torres and Gabrielle’s relationship changed. Torres became possessive. If the two were out alone, Torres would put his arm around Gabrielle and say, “[P]eople are jealous saying that they want you. I got you.” One night Gabrielle, who slept on the couch in the living room, was asleep on her stomach when Torres pulled down her pants and touched her buttocks. As he was moving his hand toward her vagina, Gabrielle, who was feigning sleep, moved. Torres jumped back, but then continued touching her. As Gabrielle kept her legs closed, Torres touched as much of her vagina as he could reach. After this incident Torres sexually abused Gabrielle after she had gone to sleep “once or so a week” for the year and a half they lived on Imperial Highway. Torres’s actions varied although Gabrielle always pretended she was repositioning herself in her sleep to minimize the contact. Sometimes Torres kissed her, pushed his penis against her buttocks and vagina or put his fingers between her vaginal lips. Once he put his penis

3 inside her vagina; on another occasion he put his mouth on it. Often Torres touched her on evenings after they had fought during the day—physically or just verbally, with Torres cursing at her—because Torres was upset there was a “male presence” around her. When Gabrielle babysat certain children, Torres would tell Gabrielle’s mother Gabrielle was sleeping with the father. Gabrielle explained, “He would always accuse me of some type of sexual act or something like that. Always telling me that I’m wearing clothes to provoke people, or I’m—I’m trying to have sex with this person or the people that I’m on the phone with, I’m trying to have sex with.” This confused Gabrielle, whose mother would “separate us and tell him . . . to calm down, and me to calm down, and to be a bigger person. She’s like, you know, he gets in his moods.” Gabrielle explained she would lie on the couch in shock while Torres was touching her. She did not tell him to stop because she “didn’t really know how to approach the situation, because that was my dad. . . . [W]ho do you go to when you argue [with] this person and somebody’s telling you to be the bigger person, like, you can’t expect somebody to believe that somebody would do that to somebody.” When Gabrielle was 13 years old, the family moved to St. Louis. Torres continued to sexually abuse her until he moved out two years later. Although there is conflicting testimony whether Gabrielle told Krystal about the abuse, Gabrielle did talk about it with a counselor she began seeing in St. Louis. She also wrote about the abuse in her journal, but threw the journal away when she was 18 years old as a “letting it go type thing.” The first time she talked to law enforcement was in 2012 after Krystal reported her own sexual abuse by Torres to the authorities. b. Krystal’s testimony Krystal was seven or eight years old when she, her mother and her sister moved out of the home they shared with Torres in San Bernardino. Krystal remembered Torres had touched her vagina over her clothes while he was tickling her, which made her uncomfortable, before they moved. Krystal had limited contact with Torres until she was 15 years old when she moved away from her mother and into the apartment on Gard Avenue. Krystal and

4 Torres argued frequently, and Torres was mean to her. Torres also began touching her at night while she was sleeping in bed with Gabrielle. Torres pulled down Krystal’s pants and rubbed in between her vaginal lips.

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