Thousands of convicted pedophiles in California served less than a year in prison after committing lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years old, according to an investigative report.
The Daily Mail analyzed a statewide database of sex offenders that showed more than 7,000 child molesters were released within months after federal authorities sentenced them to prison.
Former Los Angeles sex crimes prosecutor Samuel Dordulian told Daily Mail that the statistics “shocked” him, adding the reality is “frightening for society.”
“Statistics clearly show that pedophiles don’t get reformed,” Dordulian said. “They’re going to come out, and they’re going to commit again. Letting these people out early, we’re allowing for a lot more victimization — and that’s terrifying.”
California law requires sex offenders to register their address and update their location upon moving with the Department of Justice. Those names and other personal details are then placed in a public database under Megan’s Law, which the Clinton administration passed in 1996 after a pedophile murdered 7-year-old Megan Kanka.
According to the report, 54,986 sex offenders were listed on the website in July 2019, of which 76% committed offenses involving children.
The average pedophile served two years and ten months in prison.
One of the examples outlined in the Daily Mail report said an offender in the database named Carlos Alexander Nahue, 48, of Reseda, California, lives one block from Royal Montessori School daycare and three blocks from Reseda Elementary School after allegedly being convicted of “continuous sexual abuse of a child” in 2015.
Authorities charged Nahue in October 2014. He pled no contest to the crime in January 2015, which resulted in a judge sentencing him to only two days in an L.A. county jail and five years of probation.
According to the database, some pedophiles committed misdemeanors, such as indecent exposure or attempting to send lewd pictures to children, and convicts received less jail time. However, the most common offenses were “lewd or lascivious acts” against children under 14 years old, and 7,152 pedophiles who committed this crime served less than a year.
Dordulian said the statistics were “‘surprisingly very low.”
“In my days [in the L.A. DA’s office], we made every effort to get as long of a prison sentence as we could because we knew that the minute they’re going to come out, they’re more likely to re-offend and another child’s gonna get harmed,” he told Daily Mail.
Dordulian said as a lawyer who represents victims of sexual abuse, California Governor Gavin Newsom’s policies shorten prison sentences to reduce the population locked up.
“That has been the push for the last at least five years: letting people out of prison much earlier than what their sentences were for,” he said. “But these types of individuals, they’re not amenable to rehabilitation, and studies have shown that. They’re gonna harm another child — It’s a very, very scary trend.”
A spokesperson for the state’s attorney general told Daily Mail that “public safety is a top priority for the California Department of Justice,” adding that the issue generally falls on the responsibility of local district attorneys, courts, and state lawmakers.
“Our office actively works with law enforcement across the state to protect our state’s children and families, whether that’s through conducting sting operations targeting sexual predators, issuing guidance to reduce harm to sexually exploited youth, or launching Human Trafficking and Sexual Predator Apprehension Teams,” the spokesperson said.
Deputy District Attorney Jon Hatami, a child abuse prosecutor in the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, said the situation was “a disgrace” to Daily Mail, adding the problem is only getting worse under his boss George Gascón, who supported Proposition 57, which allows early parole for nonviolent felons.
“Thousands of child victims are being denied justice, and George Gascón and his group of radical prosecutors can care less,” Hatami said.
Hatami said the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation stopped notifying the child victims and their families of such early releases.
“It’s shameful,” he said. “Furthermore, most of these sex offenders who are released early have not been rehabilitated whatsoever. This will clearly endanger our future generation of children and our entire community — it’s a disgrace that the state of California is not prioritizing the safety and well-being of our children.”