Former California youth basketball coach convicted of sexually assaulting 4 former players
Prosecutors say Carlos Francisco Juarez groomed and exploited the young female players.
A former youth basketball coach has been convicted of sexually assaulting four young female athletes, after also being accused at trial of grooming and exploiting two others, while he was involved with a variety of Orange County club and high school teams.
Carlos Francisco Juarez, 48, was convicted Tuesday of 21 felony counts — including lewd acts upon a minor, oral copulation of a minor and sexual penetration by foreign object of a minor — in connection with four former players who ranged in age from 11 to 17 at the time of the repeated assaults between 2005 and 2010.
Two other former players made similar allegations in their testimony during Juarez’s trial, but their accusations were not included among the criminal counts filed by prosecutors.
Earlier this week, Deputy District Attorney Raquel Cooper told jurors that instead of being a mentor to his players, Juarez was a “predator” who abused the trust of the girls for his own sexual needs.
“He is a master manipulator in all senses of the word, on all fronts,” Cooper said during her closing arguments on Monday. “Grooming is how he convinced his players not to tell on him.”
Juarez coached several club basketball teams — including So Cal Swoosh and O.C. Mustangs — and also at times worked at Aliso Niguel, Costa Mesa, Mater Dei and Tustin high schools, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.
Most of the girls said the sexual abuse occurred during one-on-one basketball lessons or when he was driving them back home following those private sessions, and included kissing and groping.
One of the girls recalled Juarez forcing her, when she was 11-years-old, to run around a gym in Tustin topless, after trying to persuade her to take off all her clothes. She also testified that he gave her an envelope of money after sexually assaulting her at a practice.
A second girl testified that Juarez forced her to perform a sex act on him when she was 13-years-old in exchange for the promise that she would be a starter on her basketball team.
Another girl — whose family home Juarez moved into following a divorce — said she had an ongoing sexual relationship with Juarez that began when she was 13-years-old and lasted more than four years.
At least two of the accusers said they believed at the time that they were dating Juarez, who was decades older than the girls and who pressured them to keep their relationship a secret.
One of the former players said she “felt disgusted” by the abuse, but was ashamed to tell her parents about it. Another said she believed at the time that Juarez would have dropped her from the team if she told anyone about the assaults, adding that he told her it was “how you prove your loyalty to him,” the prosecutor said.
Juarez’s attorney, Kenneth Reed, questioned whether the accusers were telling the truth during their often-emotional testimony, telling jurors “you not required to believe things just because she is crying.” The defense attorney criticized one of them for testifying that she was telling “my truth.”
“The entire justice system lies on truth being the truth,” Reed told jurors during his closing argument. “There is no ‘my truth.’”
Juarez is scheduled to return to court for sentencing on Aug. 9. He faces up to 150 years to life in prison, according to the DA’s office.
“These young women will forever bear the trauma of being sexually assaulted by someone they should have been able to trust,” DA Todd Spitzer said in a written statement following the verdict. “He robbed these young girls of their innocence — and he victimized girl after girl until he finally got caught.”