The former Gilroy High School math teacher who pleaded no contest to four counts of sex crimes with a girl half his age will serve one year in county jail. Police were disappointed with the short sentence, but the district attorney defended it because it avoided costly and emotionally taxing court proceedings.
In return for his plea, Alberto Gomez Vicuna Jr., 33, will not receive the maximum penalty of 10 years in state prison. Instead, he will serve a one-year stint in county jail followed by three years of probation and lifetime registration as a sex offender for crimes stemming from a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old, said Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Ray Mendoza.
“I’m disappointed,” San Jose Police Detective Kendra Nunes, a lead investigator in the case, said of the sentence. “But some factors are beyond my control. We have a good working relationship with the (district attorney) and I need to trust the decision making on their end. The sex registrant status is a good thing – he won’t be able to teach again.”
Santa Clara County District Attorney Dolores Carr said the sentence is consistent with similar cases where the defendant lacks a prior record and enters an early plea, allowing attorneys to avoid a costly preliminary hearing and possible trial.
“A preliminary hearing can be very stressful for victims,” Carr said. For that reason, an early plea was encouraged, she said.
“In no way do I want to suggest this is not a serious case,” she added. “He is getting the maximum county jail time.”
Sentences in county jail are limited to one year. If the sentence is longer than that, the convicted person must serve his or her time in prison.
In response to community members’ suggestions that Vicuna’s sentence was too light, “I certainly don’t think 12 months in county jail, three years of probation and lifetime registration as a sex offender is a slap on the wrist,” Carr said. “I think it indicates the most serious sentence one can get short of going to state prison.”
If Vicuna violates any terms of his probation – including “anything close to hanging out with teenage girls,” Carr added – he could be sent to prison.
“He is on a very short leash,” she said.
Vicuna was originally charged with nine counts of sex crimes – one count of a lewd or lascivious act on a child, two counts of oral copulation with a minor, three counts of sexual penetration of a person under the age of 16 and three counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a person under the age of 16 – brought against him after police learned he had unprotected sex multiple times with a 14-year-old San Jose girl during the early morning hours of Feb. 19. However, the District Attorney’s Office dismissed five counts in exchange for Vicuna’s plea of no contest and because no other victims came forward.
“Initially we charged him with every conceivable count in case we found any other victims,” Mendoza said. “He had been on a Web site advertising himself as underage and looking for girls ages 14 to 17. We didn’t know if this would be one of these cases where we’d have a lot of victims.”
However, no other victims spoke up, Mendoza said.
“Unfortunately, no one else came forward,” Nunes said. “Based on my experience with these types of cases, this doesn’t look like a random incident. We believe there were likely other girls he met online. But believing that and being able to prove that are different things.”
As part of her investigation, Nunes said she e-mailed as many of Vicuna’s online “friends” as possible but wasn’t surprised when they didn’t respond.
Mendoza said he did not pursue rape charges because of the difficulty he would have convincing a panel of 12 jurors to agree on the issue of force, given that the girl had agreed to sneak out to meet Vicuna and consented to some sexual activity. Carr agreed that the case would have been “dramatically different” had her office been able to prove force or if Vicuna had a previous criminal record.
Vicuna will be formally sentenced 9 a.m. June 2 in Department 24 at the Hall of Justice in San Jose. He is no longer a teacher with the Gilroy Unified School District, said Superintendent Deborah Flores.
The victim, who is not a Gilroy High School student, met Vicuna online three weeks before the incident when he “friended” her on an Internet social networking site, Tagged.com, according to police reports. Vicuna was posing on the site as a 15-year-old named Juan G. Police said his profile claimed 120 friends, all but one or two of whom were female between the ages of 13 and 17. The victim’s Tagged.com account listed her as 14 years old.
After several online and phone conversations with the victim, Vicuna convinced the girl to meet him in person about 2 a.m. Feb. 19. Vicuna told the girl he was 28 and that he “forgot” to change his profile. He was actually 32 at the time.
“I thought we were just going to talk at first,” she told police.
After refusing Vicuna’s sexual advances twice and trying to push him off her, the girl finally “gave up on him.” They performed multiple sexual acts and had unprotected intercourse three times over the course of the next several hours – once in Vicuna’s truck and twice at his Morgan Hill home. Later that morning, Vicuna purchased the morning after pill for the girl and dropped her off at Oak Grove High School in San Jose to wait for her parents.
Police arrested Vicuna Feb. 25 after being alerted by the victim’s parents.
