San Diego
A San Diego Municipal Court judge on Thursday ordered a former Sunday school teacher to stand trial on 52 charges of molesting 10 girls and boys from the church.
Dale Anthony Akiki, 37, who once taught at Faith Chapel, a fundamentalist church in Spring Valley, was bound over to Superior Court for trial by Municipal Judge E. Mac Amos Jr. Amos said he would set a trial date on Feb. 27. Akiki remains in County Jail without bail.
The alleged victims are between 5 and 7 years old and the incidents reportedly occurred in 1989.
Amos dismissed several sex charges on grounds of insufficient evidence.
Akiki’s attorney, Kathleen Coyne, argued that some children had retracted their earlier accusations, and said testimony about the molestations was “neither credible nor believable.â€
None of the children testified in the hearing, which began last week. Instead, under a new state law pertaining to preliminary hearings, parents and other people who heard the children describe the alleged molestations testified.
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