WOODLAND — A Davis man has been ordered to stand trial on charges that he sexually assaulted a developmentally disabled teenage boy in the bathroom of a local library.
Dennis Lee Azevedo, 60, has pleaded not guilty to the allegations. He faces 14 felony counts including forcible oral copulation on a minor, sodomy of a minor by use of force, and allegations that the acts were committed upon a mentally, developmentally or physically disabled person.
Dennis Lee Azevedo, 59 — pictured here during his arrangement on multiple sexual assault charges — saw those charges upheld this week in Yolo Superior Court. With him is his attorney, Vincent Maher. Sue Cockrell/Enterprise photo
According to testimony offered at Azevedo’s preliminary hearing in Yolo Superior Court this week, the allegations arose on April 21, when the boy, then 14, disclosed to his junior high school teacher that he had been sexually assaulted at the Stephens Branch Library on East 14th Street.
School officials summoned the district’s school resource officer, Keirith Briesenick of the Davis Police Department, to interview the teen, who according to his teachers has the learning and decision-making abilities of a 7-year-old.
“He expressed to me that he had been having regular sexual encounters with a person he believed to be an adult at the Yolo County Library,” Briesenick testified this week. The teen told the officer he had met the man near the library’s teen section, and that the man had followed him to the restroom.
A sexual encounter ensued inside a stall, the boy said, and repeated contacts occurred on multiple occasions afterward. He did not know the man’s name, but described him as a white male with gray hair, pierced ears and glasses.
Police arrested Azevedo on April 30.
In his interview with investigators, Azevedo at first denied the allegations but later conceded having “interacted” with the teen. But he said he believed the encounters to be consensual, and that it was him, not the teen, who was followed into the bathroom each time.
“He was really aggressive. It surprised me how aggressive he was,” Azevedo told detectives Ilya Bezuglov and Janell Bestpitch during the interview, recorded on Bestpitch’s body camera and played in court. “I wasn’t being the pursuer. The kid was not shy — at all.”
Azevedo expressed surprise upon learning the boy was just 14 years old, estimating his age to be closer to 16 — still a minor, Bezuglov advised him.
“I do not go after young people,” Azevedo told the officers, also denying that he engaged in sodomy with the teen, as prosecutors have alleged.
Judge Samuel McAdam viewed a law enforcement interview with the alleged victim — which was sealed and not played in court in order to maintain the teen’s confidentiality — before ruling on Wednesday that there is sufficient evidence for the case to proceed to trial.
Prosecutors also had sought second-degree burglary enhancements on several of the charges, accusing Azevedo of entering a dwelling with the intent of committing a felony, but McAdam ruled that, under case law, the crime has to be committed while the establishment is closed.
McAdam scheduled a Sept. 7 arraignment date for Azevedo, who remains in Yolo County Jail custody in lieu of $1.65 million bail.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene