SANTA ANA — A 60-year-old man was convicted Wednesday of molesting two girls; and attempting to molest another one in a sting operation in a Huntington Beach hotel.
Jason V. Esparza would get women to babysit children as young as 4 so he could have access to them to molest them, police said in testimony at his preliminary hearing.
Huntington Beach police received a tip about him in September 2022 and set up an eight-month long investigation in which an agent posed as a woman babysitting a 4-year-old girl, according to prosecutors.
Esparza told the undercover agent of his wish to molest the girl, prosecutors said.
The sting operation with Huntington Beach police was conducted in April 2023.
“Someone who preys on the innocence of children for their own sexual gratification is a monster of indescribable evil,” Orange County DA Todd Spitzer said in a 2023 statement. “To plot, to calculate, and methodically carry out sexual attacks on unconscious children is something that can only be dreamt of and carried out by the sickest of minds.”
After his arrest, authorities said Esparza is originally from Warren, Ohio, but has ties to Huntington Beach, Fullerton and Long Beach. The sexual assaults on young children are suspected to have occurred over several decades, prosecutors said.
