WOODLAND — A Davis man will spend the rest of his life in prison, his fate sealed Friday following his conviction for sexually assaulting four children over the course of two decades.
A jury found 40-year-old Mario Roberto Rodas guilty of 15 felony charges following his September trial, including three counts — forcible rape of a child, forcible lewd acts on a child and sodomy — that carried mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole.
So that’s the punishment Yolo Superior Court Judge David Reed handed down, along with multiple sentences of 15 and 25 years to life for some of the remaining counts.
Rodas did not give a statement during the brief hearing, which was attended by one of his young victims, an 11-year-old girl, whose January assault at knifepoint led to Rodas’ arrest and prosecution.
Deputy District Attorney Kyle Hasapes, who tried the case, called Rodas’ conduct “a gross violation of the law, and even more so, a gross violation of every moral code of every culture across the face of this earth.”
“The reason we got here today is because of the courage that (the girl) showed in this court on several occasions,” Hasapes added as the victim and her family wept in the courtroom audience. “Nothing in this case is her fault, and she should not believe that any part is her fault.”
Three other victims of Rodas also took the witness stand during the weeklong trial, described molestations they endured as young children that began in 1996. Some of the reported acts occurred in the Bay Area cities of Pittsburg and Oakland, where the children were living at the time.
The Enterprise has not named the victims because of the nature of the allegations, and because they were minors at the time.
Rodas’ attorney, Supervising Deputy Public Defender Martha Sequeira, declined to comment about Friday’s sentencing.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene