Robert Ruben Ornelas was to have made the trip Friday from his Orange County Jail cell to Superior Court in Santa Ana, where the 63-year-old former teacher was due for a preliminary hearing over charges he sexually assaulted a female relative, starting when she was 5 years old in the 1990s. But his itinerary got a last-minute change that put the Santa Ana resident in federal custody, amid additional accusations that he traveled to the Philippines to have sex with a 14-year-old girl and videotaped the encounter.
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Ornelas was ordered held without bond at an initial appearance in federal court Friday afternoon, when he was officially charged with engaging in sexual conduct in a foreign place, producing child pornography and possessing child pornography–charges that carry a maximum sentence of 80 years in federal prison.
In state court, he faces two felony counts of lewd acts on a child with sentencing enhancement allegations for substantial sexual conduct with a child, which can fetch a 10-year term in state prison.
The federal indictment alleges that during a trip to the Philippines in March 2012, Ornelas had sex with an underage girl, videotaped it and brought the images back to the United States. These were among the horde of horrific child porn Russ Ornelas discovered while using his brother's computer before calling the authorities.
The indictment reveals the reason Russ searched the computer was because family members were suspicious Robert was stealing Social Security and rental payments from his mother, who suffers from dementia. Sideshow Bob lived with mom.
The 4- or 5-year-old female relative Ornelas allegedly molested per the state case is also referred to in the federal indictment, which accuses him of either molesting or sexually
abusing 10 girls.
If the accusations are true, Ornelas had plenty of places to prey. He worked in or near an unlicensed day care near his home in the 1980s and early 1990s, was a teacher in the Santa Ana Unified School District from 1992 to 2003 and coached a local girls softball team, reports the Orange County Register.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.