People v. Arenas CA4/2

Opinion

Filed 9/15/26 P. v. Arenas CA4/2 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION TWO

THE PEOPLE,

Plaintiff and Respondent, E085372 v. (Super.Ct.No. BAF2000965)

VICTOR MANUEL GOMEZ ARENAS, OPINION

Defendant and Appellant.

APPEAL from the Superior Court of Riverside County. F. Paul Dickerson III, Judge. Affirmed with directions.

James M. Crawford, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.

Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Charles C. Ragland, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Arlene A. Sevidal, Assistant Attorney General, Eric A. Swenson and Christine Y. Friedman, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

1 A jury convicted Victor Manuel Gomez Arenas of committing numerous sexual offenses against his minor stepdaughter and one step-granddaughter. On appeal, Arenas challenges the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the conviction on one count of lewd and lascivious conduct committed against the step-granddaughter. (Pen. Code, § 288, subd. (a) (section 288(a)); unlabeled statutory references are to this code.) In addition, Arenas argues and the People agree that the trial court was not authorized to include a nonvictim step-granddaughter as a protected person in a protective order issued under section 136.2, subdivision (i)(1) (section 136.2(i)(1)). We agree about the protective order but otherwise affirm.

BACKGROUND

Arenas was in a romantic relationship with Lisbeth C. In 2009, they started living together, and they married two years later. The couple had one son together, who was born in 2010. Lisbeth has five other children (three sons and two daughters) with different fathers. Her daughter A.C. was born in December 2005. Jose C. is Lisbeth’s oldest child and has three children, including one stepdaughter, D.M. (born in 2004), and one daughter, J.C. (born in 2008). In 2020, Jose and his family, including J.C. and D.M., lived with Lisbeth and Arenas. Lisbeth and Arenas lived in four residences between 2008 and 2020.

On August 12, 2020, when J.C. was 12 years old, she was home alone with Arenas. J.C. called Jose crying, and she sounded afraid. She told Jose that Arenas had attempted to grab her and kiss her on the mouth. She said that Arenas grabbed her face 2 and “pulled her face towards him to kiss her on the lips.” Jose testified that it was not normal for Arenas to kiss J.C. on the lips and that he had never seen it happen before.

Jose headed home and told J.C. to call Lisbeth immediately, which J.C. did.

J.C. asked Lisbeth to return home, saying only, “‘It’s Victor.’” J.C. could “barely speak” and sounded afraid. Lisbeth drove home quickly. When Lisbeth arrived home, Arenas was in the driveway washing a car, and J.C. was upstairs in her bedroom. Lisbeth spoke with J.C., and J.C. described how Arenas had grabbed her with his left hand, pulled her toward him, embraced her, and attempted to kiss her on the mouth. Lisbeth was shocked. She had never seen Arenas kiss J.C. before.

Lisbeth went downstairs and demanded that Arenas show her the video surveillance footage from the period when Lisbeth was not at home. Arenas initially said that he would show her the footage later and then said that he forgot how to access the footage. Lisbeth persisted in asking to see the footage over the next few days, but Arenas did not comply. Several days after the incident, Arenas showed Lisbeth a recording of him washing the car, but the recording did not contain footage from several available camera angles and did not show J.C. inside the garage or interacting with Arenas.

Lisbeth believed that the recording had been tampered with and some footage removed.

Lisbeth subsequently asked A.C. whether Arenas had ever touched her inappropriately. A.C. initially denied that he had but soon recanted and told her mother that Arenas had touched her inappropriately. A.C. cried and told Lisbeth that she had not disclosed the abuse because Arenas threatened A.C.

3 Lisbeth took A.C. to the police station to report the abuse. Jose, D.M., and J.C.

also went to the police station. Law enforcement interviewed all three girls, and all three disclosed that Arenas had touched them inappropriately.

Law enforcement searched Arenas’s cell phone and found nine images on the phone from August 12, 2020, that appeared to be still images taken from a video recording. Those images showed Arenas giving J.C. a side hug with his left arm and also showed Arenas’s face close to J.C.’s.

The People charged Arenas by amended information with numerous offenses against A.C., J.C., and D.M., including two counts of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child under 14 years old as to both J.C. and A.C. (§ 288(a); counts 1-2 [J.C.] & 7-8 [A.C.]) and two counts of sexual penetration of a child age 10 years or younger as to A.C.

(§ 288.7, subd. (b); counts 5-6). The lewd and lascivious conduct with J.C. was alleged to have been committed when she was between the ages of six and nine (count 1) and on August 12, 2020 (count 2). All four of the lewd and lascivious conduct counts contained a special allegation that Arenas committed a qualifying sex offense against multiple victims under the one strike law. (§ 667.61, subd. (e)(4).)

The trial took place in 2024. J.C., A.C., and D.M. all testified at trial, and the prosecution played recordings of the girls’ 2020 interviews with law enforcement. J.C.

was 16 years old when she testified. She described the August 12, 2020, incident as follows: Arenas was in the garage when she went outside to throw away trash. When she passed by the open garage on her way back to the house, Arenas grabbed her with his 4 left hand into “[a] side hug.” His face was close to hers. Arenas then lifted J.C.’s chin with his right hand “and went down for a kiss on the lips.” She said that he “went down to peck my lips—peck on the lips—kiss.” He placed his mouth on her mouth “for, like, a second, two seconds.” J.C. believed that Arenas’s mouth was closed, and she described what happened as “a peck.” She believed that he kissed her once, but it might have happened twice. She told law enforcement that he kissed her three times and that he repeatedly asked her why she never hugged him or talked to him. She resisted him throughout the encounter but was unsuccessful because he was stronger than she was.

She told him to stop, and he finally released her.

When J.C. was around seven years old or a little younger, Arenas touched and rubbed her buttocks with his hands on approximately four to six occasions. He touched her buttocks both over and under her clothing and underwear. He would slide his bare hand under her underwear and keep his hand there for a few seconds. No one else was home when Arenas touched J.C.’s buttocks.

A.C. was 18 years old when she testified. She said that Arenas touched and kissed her when she was a young child. The conduct started between 2011 and 2013, when A.C.

was roughly five to seven years old. During that period, Arenas “full-on kiss[ed] [A.C.]

on the lips” and sometimes “put his tongue in [her] mouth.”

A.C. testified at trial that during that same period, Arenas touched her vagina once. He put his hand inside her skirt, moved her underwear to the side, touched her vagina with one finger, and placed his finger “a little bit” inside her vagina. But in her 5 interview with law enforcement, A.C. said that during the same period Arenas inserted his fingers into her vagina more than once and probably more than five times, and he also grabbed her breasts and buttocks underneath her clothing.

Arenas put his fingers in A.C.’s vagina approximately two times between 2013 and 2015, when she was seven to 10 years old. And A.C. told law enforcement that Arenas touched her inappropriately about once every two weeks when she was 10 or 11 until she was 14, which is when J.C. reported the kissing incident.

A.C. never told Lisbeth about anything that Arenas did to her, because Arenas threatened A.C. when she was five years old. He told her that “[s]omething would happen to” Lisbeth if A.C. told anyone about the touching.

D.M. described two incidents that occurred before she was 15 years old, in which Arenas kissed her on the lips and touched her breasts.

The jury found Arenas guilty of all six of the charged offenses involving A.C.

(counts 5-8) and J.C. (counts 1 & 2) but deadlocked on the two charges involving D.M.

(counts 3 & 4). The jury found true the multiple-victim allegations under the one strike law. The court declared a mistrial as to counts 3 and 4 and subsequently granted the People’s motion to dismiss those counts.

The court sentenced Arenas to 45 years to life in state prison. The court issued a 10-year criminal protective order under section 136.2(i)(1) protecting J.C., D.M., and A.C.

6 DISCUSSION

I. Sufficiency of the evidence Arenas contends that there was insufficient evidence that when he kissed J.C. he harbored the requisite sexual intent to support the lewd and lascivious conduct conviction on count 2. We disagree.

“In reviewing a sufficiency of the evidence claim, our role is limited. We review the entire record to determine whether it discloses reasonable and credible evidence to allow a rational trier of fact to determine guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” (People v. Cardenas (2020) 53 Cal.App.5th 102, 119, fn. 11 (Cardenas).) “We draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the judgment.” (Ibid.) “Matters of credibility of witnesses and the weight of the evidence are ‘“‘the exclusive province’”’ of the trier of fact.” (Ibid.) “‘If the circumstances reasonably justify the trier of fact’s findings, the opinion of the reviewing court that the circumstances might also be reasonably reconciled with a contrary finding does not warrant a reversal of the judgment.’” (People v. Perez (1992) 2 Cal.4th 1117, 1124 (Perez).)

Section 288(a) provides that “a person who willfully and lewdly commits any lewd or lascivious act” against “a child who is under the age of 14 years, with the intent of arousing, appealing to, or gratifying the lust, passions, or sexual desires of that person or the child, is guilty of a felony.” “Any touching of a child under the age of 14 violates this section, even if the touching is outwardly innocuous and inoffensive, if it is accompanied by the intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desires of either the perpetrator 7 or the victim.” (People v. Lopez (1998) 19 Cal.4th 282, 289.) The factfinder “looks to all the circumstances, including the charged act, to determine whether it was performed with the required specific intent.” (People v. Scott (1994) 9 Cal.4th 331, 344, fn. 7; People v. Martinez (1995) 11 Cal.4th 434, 450.) Other relevant factors may include “other acts of lewd conduct admitted or charged in the case” and “the relationship of the parties.”

(Martinez, at p. 445.)

There was ample evidence that Arenas harbored the requisite sexual intent when he kissed J.C. on the lips when she was 12 years old. The jury could reasonably infer lewd intent from all of the circumstances of the charged act: Arenas grabbed J.C. and held onto her even as she struggled to be released and to avoid being kissed. Arenas and J.C. were home alone, and both Lisbeth and Jose said that they had never seen Arenas kiss J.C. on the lips before. In addition, the jury could reasonably infer lewd intent from the numerous other sexual acts that Arenas committed against J.C. and A.C., who were close in age and both of whom were related to Arenas through marriage. Those acts included touching J.C.’s buttocks with a bare hand under her underwear before she was age seven, touching A.C.’s buttocks, breasts, and vagina, and inserting his finger into A.C.’s vagina. The jury could reasonably infer that all of that conduct was “unmistakably sexually motivated.” (People v. Morales (2018) 29 Cal.App.5th 471, 479.)

Arenas’s argument to the contrary is unavailing. He contends that his act of kissing J.C. on the mouth for one or two seconds with a closed mouth and without “any 8 form of French kissing” or preceding or subsequent sexual conduct was “a simple peck on the lips” or “a simple momentary kiss by a step-grandfather,” devoid of any sexual intent. But the jury was not required to interpret the evidence that way. Rather, the jury was free to conclude that the circumstances of the kiss and Arenas’s numerous other sexual acts involving A.C. and J.C. supported a reasonable inference that Arenas kissed J.C. with the intent of gratifying his sexual desires. In general, weighing the evidence is the exclusive province of the jury. (Cardenas, supra, 53 Cal.App.5th at p. 119, fn. 11.)

We do not reweigh the evidence or draw inferences contrary to the jury’s findings.

(People v. Wilson (2020) 56 Cal.App.5th 128, 155.) Nor can we reverse the jury’s findings merely because the evidence might also support different inferences or contrary findings. (Perez, supra, 2 Cal.4th at p. 1124.)

For all of the foregoing reasons, we conclude that there was substantial evidence to support the lewd and lascivious conduct conviction on count 2.

II. Protective order Section 136.2(i)(1) provides: “When a criminal defendant has been convicted of a crime ... that requires the defendant to register pursuant to subdivision (c) of Section 290, the court, at the time of sentencing, shall consider issuing an order restraining the defendant from any contact with a victim of the crime.” To be included as a protected person under section 136.2(i)(1), the person must be a victim of one of the registrable offenses of which the defendant was convicted. (People v. Walts (2025) 112 Cal.App.5th 127, 142-143; see also § 136, subpart (3).)

9 The jury did not convict Arenas of any charges involving D.M. We consequently agree with the parties that D.M. does not qualify as a victim within the meaning of section 136.2(i)(1). The trial court therefore was not authorized to include D.M. as a protected person in the protective order issued under section 136.2(i)(1).

DISPOSITION

The trial court is directed to (1) terminate the existing criminal protective order issued on December 20, 2024, and (2) issue a new criminal protective order under section 136.2(i)(1) that identifies only J.C. and A.C. as protected persons but is otherwise identical to the previous protective order, with an expiration date of December 20, 2034.

In all other respects, the judgment is affirmed.

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS

MENETREZ J.

We concur:

RAMIREZ P. J.

FIELDS J.