A former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy was sentenced Friday to 40 years in prison for sexually abusing four girls.
Sean Essex, 53, a deputy for more than 22 years until his arrest in 2022, was sentenced by Judge George G. Lomeli immediately after pleading no contest to repeatedly sexually abusing the girls, who ranged in age from 4 to 10. 13 years.
The veteran agent was arrested and charged in 2022 after investigators documented repeated sexual abuse of the three young daughters of a woman Essex was dating. Essex was also accused of abusing another girl in 2006. Prosecutors learned of that allegation in 2006, but did not charge him at the time.
“The horrific sexual abuse that Mr. Essex inflicted on these young victims has not only violated his oath as a law enforcement officer to protect and serve the community, but has also left these children with lifelong trauma,” the district said. Lawyer. said George Gascón when announcing the sentence. “Children have an inviolable right to safety and protection. “The victims have shown tremendous courage in coming forward and speaking out about the abuse they suffered at the hands of Mr. Essex.”
Essex pleaded no contest to three counts of continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14 and one count of lewd and lascivious acts on a child under 14. Additionally, she admitted to having taken advantage of a position of trust in the commission of the crime and that victim was especially vulnerable, according to prosecutors.
At the time he was initially arrested by his own department's internal affairs and special victims unit in April 2022, Essex was assigned to the sheriff's training office. Essex was released on bail, but was arrested again in August 2022 and has remained behind bars since, jail records show.
The original 33-count indictment filed in 2022 included charges of sexual abuse against the sisters and the girl he abused in 2006, which the district attorney's office declined to prosecute at the time.
According to Spencer Lucas, an attorney for the sisters and their family, Essex had a romantic relationship with his victims' mother at one point. According to the indictment, she was living with the girls when she sexually abused two of them.
One of the sisters was under 10 at the time, prosecutors said, and the other two were under 14. Essex groomed the girls and remained close to them even after he and their mother broke up, according to Lucas.
“He would pick up girls individually in his Los Angeles County sheriff's patrol car, and he would take them and abuse them in the patrol car,” Lucas told the Times after the indictment. Lucas said some of the abuse occurred in the Sheriff's Department parking lot.
On Friday, Lomeli ordered Essex to pay restitution to the victims in an amount to be determined by the court.
