RAMIREZ, P. J.
A jury convicted defendant, Jorge Castro, of oral copulation of a minor by force (Pen. Code, § 269, subd. (a)(4)),
Most of the facts will be disclosed in connection with our discussion of the issues. Between 2005 and 2009, defendant, brother of the victim's father, molested the victim in his own home and while living in the victim's family's home. The victim was best able to provide the chronology of the acts by referring to the house in which they took place. One incident, which we will refer to as the bed incident, that has not otherwise been described in detail below, took place at defendant's house in Hemet. Defendant had constructed for his young daughter a castle type configuration that contained a play kitchen on the floor of her bedroom and her bed a distance above the play kitchen. During the bed incident, defendant's daughter pretended to take food orders from defendant and the victim, and then pretended to prepare the food in the play kitchen. While the daughter was "down stairs" in the play kitchen, defendant laid the victim on the bed and pulled her pants and panties down to the bottom of her legs. Defendant French kissed the victim, sucked on her breasts, then moved down to her genitals where he used his hands to open her outer lips and touched the middle part of the entry to her vagina with his tongue. He fingered the area between her outer genital lips. More than one time, he told her to suck his penis and he held her head and moved it while his penis was in her mouth. He placed his penis between her outer genital lips and moved it until he ejaculated onto her genitals. He and the victim then heard the front door open and he told her to hurry up and run to the bathroom and wash off the ejaculate, which he called "love juice." She did not understand what defendant had done. Later that day, they went to the park and when she and defendant were alone, he asked her if she had cleaned off "all the love juice." He told her not to tell about this incident.
Defendant bought the victim shoes with wheels on the heels and an iPod Touch for Christmas and her birthday, while buying her brothers less expensive gifts for Christmas and their birthdays. The victim's mother testified that the iPod Touch cost $300 and was given to the victim by defendant when the victim was 9 or 10 years old.
The victim testified that she disclosed the molestations after she caught defendant's daughter masturbating in the shower and concluded that defendant must have been molesting her also because she was too young to do this without having been abused.
Defendant testified, admitting that his wife and mother had confronted him on September 9, 2009 about the victim. He further admitted that while the victim's father was gone from the home the two families shared, defendant left, leaving his wife and children behind, and never returned. Thereafter, he did not communicate with the victim's father or her mother. He admitted that he had a history of being accused of sexual assault. He denied inappropriately touching the victim or the minor daughter of a girlfriend with whom he had previously lived in Las Vegas, which we refer to below as "the prior victim."
The prosecution elected to have the forcible aggravated sexual assault charge to be comprised of what occurred when defendant, defendant's daughter, the victim and the victim's brother played hide-and-seek at the Hemet house.
That incident began with the victim's brother being the "seeker" and defendant, defendant's daughter, who was a toddler at the time, and the victim being the "hiders." Defendant told the victim to go with him into a closet to hide from the victim's brother and defendant's daughter entered the closet as well. Defendant sat the victim down on his lap and placed his daughter to her left. Defendant unbuttoned the victim's pants and put his right hand down her pants under her panties. He touched the "middle top" of the entrance to her vagina
When the victim disclosed the molestations to her friend, she told the friend that she was afraid of defendant. The victim testified, without specifying a time, that she was scared defendant would do something to her, like hurt her, if she told and defendant "scares [her] a lot." She added that she knew defendant would end up in jail.
Defendant was charged with a "violation of Penal Code section 269, subdivision (a), subsection (5) . . . in that . . . he did commit aggravated sexual assault . . ., in that he did willfully and unlawfully commit a violation of Penal Code section 289, subdivision (a)
The instruction that should have been given for the offense charged and found is Judicial Council of California Criminal Jury Instruction, CALCRIM No. 1045, which provides, "The defendant is charged . . . with sexual penetration by force . . . in violation of Penal Code section 289 . . . . [¶] To prove that the defendant is guilty of this crime, the People must prove that: [¶] 1. The defendant committed an act of sexual penetration with another person; [¶] 2. The penetration was accomplished by using . . . a . . . foreign object . . .; [¶] 3. The other person did not consent to the act; [¶] AND [¶] 4. The defendant accomplished the act: . . . [¶] by force, violence, duress, menace, or fear of immediate and unlawful bodily injury to another person [(hereinafter, "force, etc.")]. [¶] . . . [¶] . . . In order to consent, a person must act freely and voluntarily and know the nature of the act. [¶] . . . [¶] An act is accomplished by force if a person uses enough physical force to overcome the other person's will. [¶] Duress means a direct or implied threat of force, violence, danger, hardship, or retribution that is enough to cause a reasonable person of ordinary sensitivity to do . . . or submit to . . . something that . . . she would not otherwise do . . . or submit to . . . . When deciding whether the act was accomplished by duress, consider all the circumstances, including the age of the other person and . . . her relationship to the defendant. [¶] [Retribution and menace were also defined.] [¶] . . . An act is accomplished by fear if the other person is actually and reasonably afraid . . . or . . . she is actually but unreasonably afraid and the defendant knows of . . . her . . . fear and takes advantage of it . . . ."
Thus, the instruction given omitted the force, etc. element of the charged offense and erroneously provided that the consent of the victim was not a defense to the crime.
Without addressing the second error in the instruction given noted above, the parties agree that the failure to instruct the jury on force, etc. requires reversal of this conviction unless we may conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the error did not contribute to the verdict. It must be clear beyond a reasonable doubt that a rational jury would have found defendant guilty even if it had been instructed as to the force, etc. element. (See Neder v. United States (1999) 527 U.S. 1, 15 [119 S.Ct. 1827].) The People assert that it would have because defendant's defense was that he didn't commit any inappropriate touching of the victim ever—that the hide-and-seek incident never happened. In convicting defendant of the other counts, the People argue, the jury necessarily disbelieved his all-encompassing denial, and would have done the same regarding this count as well.
The People elected the act that comprised the forced oral copulation charge to be defendant putting his mouth on the victim's vaginal opening or forcing her to put her mouth on his penis during the bed incident.
The victim testified that she did not try to push defendant away when he touched her breasts when she was younger, but she did when she was older. She testified that at the Hemet house, when no one was looking, defendant grabbed her breasts more than five times and touched her private part on top of and under her clothes, all throughout the house, on occasion while she was playing with his daughter. According to the victim's father, defendant moved out of Hemet and into the victim's family's Winchester house in 2006 or 2007, when the victim was 10 or 11 years old. The victim testified, without specifying where this occurred, that defendant touched her private part a lot and she got used to it after a while, but when she got older, at age 11 or 12, she realized what defendant was doing and she pushed him off. She added that in later years, when she would push defendant off her, he would not stop, but would continue to keep trying to touch her. At the Winchester house, once when she went into the computer room where defendant and his family stayed, defendant grabbed her breasts and private part. On another occasion in the garage of this house, she went to get something out of the freezer and defendant grabbed her breasts and commented that they were getting really big and he rubbed her nipples. On another occasion in this house, defendant came up from behind the victim, who was sitting on the couch, and grabbed and squeezed her breasts. This happened again when the victim went into her father's and stepmother's bedroom to borrow a shirt. She pushed defendant off and ran out of the room and he followed her. On another occasion, she was showing defendant and his daughter her room at the Winchester house when defendant closed the door and sat blocking it. He grabbed the victim, turned her around, pulled her onto his lap and put his hands down her pants and panties. He rubbed her private part and stopped only when the victim's father called her name. She testified that over 50 times, defendant followed her around the Winchester house and waited until no one was around and touched her breasts. Without specifying where this occurred, the victim testified that defendant touched her over 30 times in the presence of his daughter, who was too young at the time to realize what defendant was doing, and 30 times outside the daughter's presence.
Defendant claims that the jury must have based its finding as to two of these counts on the incidents occurring on the couch, in the computer room and in the garage.
As defendant correctly acknowledges, duress can be based on the familial relationship between the victim and the defendant, their relative ages and sizes, and the fact that the defendant had continuously exploited the victim. (People v. Schultz (1992) 2 Cal.App.4th 999, 1005.) However, defendant asserts that where the defendant does not restrain the victim and the victim does not resist, there can be no duress, citing People v. Espinoza (2002) 95 Cal.App.4th 1287, 1319-1320. However, in Espinoza, the victim, who was mentally challenged, had an opportunity to resist or object and did not. (Id. at pp. 1293, 1320.)
In Veale, supra, 160 Cal.App.4th 40, this court upheld convictions of committing forcible lewd and lascivious acts on a minor on the basis of duress where "[The victim] testified [her stepfather] did not threaten her or use physical force . . . . She also testified that when [he] asked her to put his penis in her mouth and, on another occasion, asked her to touch his penis, she got mad and threw clothes around the room. [He] relented and did not make the same request again. [¶] . . . [The victim] was seven years old at the time of the molestation. . . . [S]he was normally alone with defendant in his or [her] bedroom. On at least one occasion, the bedroom door was locked. And, as [her] stepfather, [he] was an authority figure in the household. In addition, [she] feared defendant and feared that if she told anyone [he] was molesting her, [he] would kill her or her mother. [¶] . . . A reasonable inference could be made that [he] made an implied threat sufficient to support a finding of duress, based on evidence that [she] feared [him] and was afraid that if she told anyone about the molestation, [he] would harm or kill [her], her mother or someone else. Additional factors supporting a finding of duress include [her] young age when she was molested; the disparity between [her] and [his] age and size; and [his] position of authority in the family." (Id. at pp. 46-47.)
Here, like in Veale, the victim testified that she was afraid of defendant, that he scared her and she feared that he would harm her. There was evidence of his position as her superior, whom she had been taught to obey, and of his position of importance in the family. She feared the repercussions to her family of reporting the molestations and her father felt those repercussions first hand, in that his family stopped speaking to him due to her report. Although the victim was older than the victim in Veale at the time of the incidents at issue, it cannot be forgotten that she was younger than the victim in Veale when defendant began inappropriately touching her, and this reasonably had an impact on her psychologically. Finally, to whatever extent the victim "accommodated" defendant's unwanted and inappropriate sexual contact when she was younger because she perhaps did not understand the significance of them, by the time the acts at issue here occurred, she did understand and she did resist, but that resistance was overcome. Under the circumstances, defendant has not carried his heavy burden of demonstrating that the evidence was insufficient to show duress. (See People v. Ochoa (1993) 6 Cal.4th 1199, 1206.)
Before trial began, the People sought to introduce evidence of defendant's prior molestation of a victim in Las Vegas (hereinafter, "the prior victim") to prove intent. The People asserted that the prior victim "will testify that when she was 9 or 10 years old, the defendant ([her] godmother's son) touched her on many occasions in her [home] and his. The defendant told [her] that he had wanted to do things to her since she was a baby but that she was too small. He took pictures of her orally copulating him and then ripped them up. The defendant made her orally copulate him on at least 10 occasions, digitally penetrated [her] on more than 5 occasions, grabbed her breasts on numerous occasions, and orally copulated her more than once. As with [the current victim], the defendant showered [her] with presents. He also threatened to cut her with ninja stars or harm her family if she did not comply with his demands." The People represented that the victim of the instant crimes would testify that defendant grabbed her breasts nine times in the Winchester house, including one incident during which he commented on their size and another during which he was so forceful that he fell onto the sofa and caused the victim to fall on top of him. The People also represented that defendant touched the 10 or 11 year old current victim on the opening of her vagina when she showed him and his daughter her room. The hide-and-seek incident was described by the People to include digital penetration and the rubbing of the victim's chest. According to the People, the victim's breasts were grabbed on at least five occasions at the Hemet home and she was molested about 12 times there. This included the bed incident, when the victim was seven or eight years old. The incident involving the dolls on defendant's bed and two incidents of defendant squeezing the victim's breasts in the Fontana home was also described by the People.
At the hearing on the motion, defense counsel represented that the prior victim had reported the molestations to her mother on March 5, 1996. The defense opposed the introduction of this evidence on the ground that its prejudicial impact outweighed its probative value. Counsel also informed the court that the prior incidents had not resulted in any charges against defendant. The trial court allowed the evidence to be admitted, finding that its probative value outweighed its prejudicial impact. Defendant now contests this ruling.
Defendant contends that considering the number of acts the prior victim testified to and how he threatened her with physical injury and death, the trial court abused its discretion in admitting the evidence. The prior victim testified that when she was seven and eight years old, defendant grabbed and squeezed her breasts more than 50 times, mostly in her home. Defendant told her if she ever told, he would hurt her family. She testified that defendant also rubbed her between her outer labia lips, both over and under her pants, but never when anyone else was at home, with the exception of her little brother, who would be in the next room. On one occasion, he laid her down on a bed and pulled down her pants and panties and inserted his finger into her vagina, which really hurt, she told him to stop, but he did not. On sixty other occasions, he touched her genitals.
Defendant did not object when the prior victim's trial testimony differed from the People's prediction as to it regarding the number of times defendant forced her to orally copulate him (10 versus 15) and the fact that he touched her genitals 60 times. Other than the express threats made to the prior victim, the one digital penetration and the taking of pictures, the number and nature of the acts to which she testified were not remarkably different from those testified to by the current victim. In fact, they were so similar that the trial court's finding of high relevancy was entirely reasonable. While defendant points out that the fact that he was not charged for the prior molestations created the possibility that this jury convicted him of the charged crimes to punish him also for those, it was a fact used to benefit defendant in that defense counsel could imply that the authorities disbelieved the prior victim, and, thus, refused to bring charges against defendant.
Defendant claims, for the first time, that the prior molestations were too remote in time to be relevant. However, his failure to object on this specific basis below forecloses this argument. (Evid. Code, § 353.) Moreover, there was only a five or six year time gap between the prior victim's molestations and the beginning of this victim's.
Finally, contrary to defendant's assertion, the trial court has no obligation to engage in a balancing process under Evidence Code section 352 on the record. Defense counsel's objection on the basis of that section was clear—the trial court's rejection of it was equally clear.
Defendant's attempt to argue that section 1108 violates his constitutional rights is foreclosed by the Supreme Court's rejection of this argument in People v. Falsetta (1999) 21 Cal.4th 903, which defendant acknowledges binds us. (Auto Equity Sales, Inc. v. Superior Court (1962) 57 Cal.2d 450, 455.)
The trial court ordered defendant to pay a fine of $3,300 pursuant to section 290.3.
In People v. Voit (2011) 200 Cal.App.4th 1353 and People v. Valenzuela (2009) 172 Cal.App.4th 1246, 1248, the appellate courts held that fines under section 290.3 constituted punishment, subject to the prohibition on ex post facto laws.
The trial court did not make a determination, based on the conflicting evidence presented at trial as outlined above, when counts one and seven occurred. Such a factual determination must be made, at least as to count one. If the People opt not to retry defendant for count seven and his conviction is thereby reduced to a conviction of violating section 289, subdivision (j)
Defendant's conviction for aggravated sexual assault of a minor by force (count seven) is reversed for instructional error. Its 15 years-to-life term and that portion of the total $3,300 fine pursuant to section 290.3 attributable to it is stricken. The matter is remanded so the trial court can determine when count one was committed and impose an appropriate fine pursuant to section 290.3 as to it. If the trial court determines that it was committed before September 20, 2006, it must amend the total fine according to the views expressed in this opinion and reflect this in an amendment to the abstract of judgment. The court is further directed to amend the abstract to show whatever year it determines this crime was committed, rather than the year 2009, as the abstract currently states. The court is further directed to amend the abstract to show that counts two through six were committed in 2008-2009, not 2009, as the abstract currently states. If the People opt not to retry defendant on count seven, his conviction on that count will be for a violation of section 289, subdivision (j) and the trial court will sentence him for that conviction, determine when that crime occurred, adjust the total fine imposed under section 290.3 according to the views expressed in this opinion, if appropriate, and note all of this in an amendment to the abstract of judgment. The remainder of the judgment is affirmed.