WOODLAND — Rather than face a second trial, a former Davis day-care provider accused of molesting a 4-year-old girl pleaded no contest last week to misdemeanor child endangerment.
The jury in Eduardo Letelier’s first Yolo Superior Court trial deadlocked 9-3 to acquit him of a felony oral copulation charge, also finding him not guilty of allegations that he resisted police who arrested him in the back yard of his South Davis home last year.
Since the mistrial, attorneys in the case have met several times to resolve the matter, coming up Thursday with a compromise that calls for Letelier, 44, to serve two years of probation, surrender his family’s day-care license and avoid contact with the alleged victim until her 18th birthday.
“While we were disappointed with the hung jury, our belief in the victim has never wavered,” said Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Melinda Aiello, who prosecuted the case. “This resolution ensures her abuser is held accountable and gives her some measure of protection until she is an adult.”
The girl’s mother delivered a victim impact statement during Thursday’s plea and sentencing, asking for the maximum possible punishment and saying her daughter had been “humiliated, violated and traumatized … and there is no way to undo this damage.”
Letelier’s defense attorney Michael Chastaine, meanwhile, said his client “continues to maintain that he is 100-percent innocent,” but also realized a second trial would bring unwanted risks and strain.
“The cost and physical stress of going through another trial had to be weighed against a misdemeanor,” which does not require Letelier to serve jail time or register as a sex offender. “How do you turn that down? Now he can go on with his life.”
Davis police arrested Letelier on July 13, 2016, a day after the girl disclosed to her parents that Letelier “put his pee pee in my mouth” while brushing her teeth in the bathroom of the day-care facility. She repeated the allegation during a forensic interview and on the witness stand during the April trial.
Letelier denied the allegation. Chastaine took aim at the girl’s mother, a human-development graduate student whom he described as being “obsessed with child abuse,” noting she taught her children early on about human anatomy, and whose attention the girl may have sought in making the claim.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene