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OC businessman gets 50 years to life for molesting 4-year-old
| Thursday, Oct 12 2006 5:15 AM
Last Updated: Thursday, Oct 12 2006 5:15 AM
An Orange County businessman was sentenced to serve 50 years to life in prison for the videotaped molestation of a preschool girl during a two-year period.
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David Hwang, 35, agreed to plead guilty to all charges under a deal that Superior Court Judge Gary Paer said would spare the girl and her family from reliving "the nightmare."
Hwang admitted to 60 counts of kidnapping for child molestation, lewd acts on a child under 14, oral copulation on a person under 14, anal or genital penetration with a foreign object of a child under 14, using a minor for sex acts and sodomy of a person under 14.
Prosecutors said Hwang and his wife, Sheila Marie Sikat, who is also charged, deceived the girl's parents into letting them "baby-sit" her to practice their parenting skills.
The couple was arrested in 2003, after authorities searching their home found a box they dubbed the "chest of horrors" containing 200 homemade videotapes. Authorities said the couple filmed sex sessions with the girl, who was a relative. Some videos were shot in Orange County and others in the 1990s in Texas, where Hwang went to college and lived before moving to California.
Some tapes allegedly show Hwang molesting girls, sometimes with the participation of his wife or, in earlier years, a former girlfriend, who is also charged.
Investigators in Orange County and Texas have not been able to identify all the victims.
Hwang will not be eligible for parole until he is 77. He had faced a sentence of at least 93 years had he been convicted at trial.
His wife was scheduled to go to trial Nov. 17.