A former
Desert Hot Springs police officer was convicted Tuesday of multiple charges of aggravated sexual assault and lewd acts on a child under 14 for repeatedly raping an underage female relative during a 10-year period.
Dennis Paul Decker, 37, began molesting the now-18-year-old relative when she was 7.
Jurors, however, acquitted Decker on one charge and could not reach verdicts on other charges stemming from alleged attacks in 2005-06 on a second teen who was taking part in the Police Department's Explorers ride-along program that Decker founded and operated.
A sentencing date was not immediately known. Decker, who was being held in lieu of $2 million bail, had been facing the possibility of life in prison if he had been convicted of all 20 charges he was facing. It was unclear what sentence he now faces.
The verdicts came on the jury's third day of deliberations.
On Monday, two of the jurors asked
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Harold W. Hopp if they could change their vote on one of the charges. Hopp responded with a note saying the jurors can change their votes during deliberations, Decker's attorney
John Patrick Dolan said.
Last Thursday, the jury asked for a read-back of testimony from the relative who said Decker raped her. The panel also asked to review some recorded audio from the trial and for more information on instructions pertaining to other charges.
In his closing argument last Wednesday, Dolan told jurors they cannot convict Decker if they have a reasonable doubt about his guilt, and he insisted there was plenty.
"All you have are her words," Dolan told the jury, referring to the young relative's charges.
He said the girl did not accuse Decker of anything until after June 2004, when the defendant and the girl's mother found love letters she had written to another girl and forbade her from seeing her again.
Dolan insisted that prosecutors had presented no evidence proving that Decker molested the girl for a decade.
Dolan also questioned the allegations raised by the other alleged victim, a now-15-year-old former Explorer who claims Decker touched her inappropriately and sent her sexually suggestive e-mails.
He argued the girl was not a credible witness because she testified she became a member of the program in the fall of 2005, even though an application she filled out showed that Decker did not approve her admission until the following March.
During her closing argument,
Deputy District Attorney Victoria Cameron showed jurors a photo of the young relative at the age of 7, clutching a baby doll.
"Imagine what it was like for this little girl to be victimized over and over again. ... She had no control," Cameron said. "Imagine her terror, the pain that she felt when the man that was supposed to love her ... used her as a sex toy."
The years of abuse caused severe psychological consequences for the girl, who began cutting herself and abusing marijuana and alcohol, the prosecutor said.
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