Thousands of pedophiles in California getting less than a year in jail

Pedophiles are getting less than a year prison time after a range of horrific acts, including raping kids under 14, a DailyMail.com investigation reveals.

Analysis of a California database of sex offenders shows thousands of child molesters are being let out after just a few months, despite sentencing guidelines.

Current and former sex crime prosecutors said the figures are 'terrifying' and 'shameful'.

More than 7,000 sex offenders were convicted of 'lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age' but were let out of prison the same year they were incarcerated, data from the California Megan's Law database says.

Others who committed some of the worst child sex crimes on the statute books served similarly short sentences, including 365 pedophiles convicted of continuous sexual abuse of a child who spent less than 12 months in prison, 39 cases of sodomy with a child under 16, and three cases of kidnapping a child under 14 'with intent to commit lewd or lascivious acts', according to the data.

Former Los Angeles sex crimes prosecutor Samuel Dordulian told DailyMail.com he was 'shocked' by the statistics and described them as 'frightening for society'.

'Statistics clearly show that pedophiles don't get reformed. They're going to come out and they're going to commit again,' Dordulian said.

'Letting these people out early, we're allowing for a lot more victimization. And that's terrifying.'

It is unclear whether the Megan's Law database prison time statistics are similar for other states, as DailyMail.com was only able to obtain detailed sex offender data for California.

One offender in the database is Reseda, resident Carlos Alexander Nahue, 48, who was convicted of 'continuous sexual abuse of a child' in 2015.

His Los Angeles court records say he was charged in October 2014 and pled no contest to the crime in January 2015 – but was sentenced to just two days in an LA county jail and five years of probation.

He now lives one block from Royal Montessori School daycare and three blocks from Reseda Elementary School, according to the Megan's Law database.

Noah Thomas Holt, from Watsonville in Santa Cruz County, was convicted in 2013 of lewd acts with an under-14-year-old, child pornography possession and indecent exposure.

The 31-year-old was convicted on a no contest plea in December 2013. But Megan's law data says he was released within a year, and according to his Facebook page he started a new job at manufacturing company Threshold Enterprises in Scotts Valley, California in 2014.

Holt has posted several pictures with a young girl on his Facebook page. He was also convicted of a DUI in 2017.

Gualterio Lopez Contreras, 47, was charged in May 2014 with sodomy by use of force, sexual penetration by force, and continuous sexual abuse of a child.

He took a plea deal from Fresno county prosecutors, pleaded no contest to one count of a lewd or lascivious act with a minor in February 2016, and was sentenced to three years in Wasco State Prison.

But the court record says he was given credits of 790 days, which would leave just 305 days to serve, or less than a year.

A Megan's Law record for Contreras from three years ago says he was released from prison in 2016. There is no longer a record for him in the current Megan's Law database.

Mountain View resident Thierry Armand Costa, 61, was convicted in 2014 of lewd acts with an under-14 and using a minor to make child porn, but was released from prison the same year, according to the database.

His Santa Clara County court records say he was sentenced for the crimes in November 2013 but had two probation motions heard in his case in 2015. He also had a hearing to remove his records from the courts in October 2019.

According to his LinkedIn page, he worked as Vice President of Marketing for a software company in the Bay Area from 2010 until 2013, founded his own company GreenZone Security Software Inc between 2013 and 2015, and then got another VP Marketing role at ENENSYS Technologies in July 2015 – suggesting any prison time he served for the awful crimes was certainly over by 2015.

Like most states, California has a law requiring sex offenders to register their address with the Department of Justice, and to provide updates if they move house.

In 1996 the Clinton administration passed a law, named after a pedophile murder victim Megan Kanka, to require their information be published.

California's Megan's Law website, www.meganslaw.ca.gov, allows anyone to search for sex offenders, with details including name, age, residence, offenses, their mugshot, and the dates they were last convicted and released from prison.

DailyMail.com compiled the data of the 54,986 sex offenders who were listed on the website in July 2019 and analyzed the results.

DailyMail.com compared the published dates of these pedophiles' convictions versus the year they were released from prison according to the Megan's Law database.

The results showed that the average pedophile served two years and 10 months in prison.

LA attorney Dordulian said that was 'surprisingly very low.'... (Read more)

Latest News