Thermal Man Convicted Of Molesting Girlfriend's Young Daughter

THERMAL, CA — A 36-year-old Thermal man who repeatedly sexually molested a girlfriend's young daughter over a period of years was convicted Tuesday of nearly a dozen felony charges.

A Riverside jury deliberated just over a day before finding Alfonso Gonzalez Meraz guilty of four counts each of forcible lewd acts on a child and sexual assault of a minor under 10 years old, as well as two counts of oral copulation under force or duress and one count of kidnapping to commit rape.

Riverside County Superior Court Judge Sam Shouka scheduled a sentencing hearing for Jan. 10 at the Riverside Hall of Justice.

The defendant is being held without bail at the Robert Presley Jail.

According to a trial brief filed by the District Attorney's Office, the victim, whose identity was not disclosed and who is now 21 years old, was targeted by Meraz from the first months he began living with her mother in the summer of 2009 to the time the woman ended their relationship in the summer of 2015.

The victim divulged to her mother what had transpired in the fall of that year, and the woman reported it to sheriff's deputies, but the investigation dragged on another four years before sufficient evidence could be gathered to justify a criminal complaint, the brief said.

The victim told detectives she'd tried suggestive ways to alert her mother to what was going on in the Thermal home, but the woman apparently paid little attention while Meraz remained her live-in boyfriend, prosecutors wrote.

Court papers said the girl was "sexually touched and raped by the defendant from when she was 6 until she was 11."

"The victim said it happened too many times to count," the brief stated.

There were instances of the defendant forcing the girl to orally copulate him and him doing the same to her, as well as kissing and groping her regularly under her clothes, according to the prosecution.

In a final effort to elicit some acknowledgement from the defendant, a pretext phone call was set up in September 2019, during which the victim called Meraz and discussed what he had done to her as a child. The brief said the recorded conversation led to the defendant making "adoptive admissions," which provided sufficient basis to arrest him.

When detectives asked him directly about the victim's allegations, he told them, "she is a good girl and is not a liar, nor does she exaggerate," according to court papers.

The defendant had no documented prior felony convictions in Riverside County.