Molester With AIDS Gets Sentence of 165 Years

By RICHARD WARCHOL

June 26, 1998 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

A registered sex offender infected with the AIDS virus was sentenced to 165 years in prison Thursday for having sex with a 15-year-old Port Hueneme boy.

Sean Alexander De France, 40, who served six years in state prison for multiple counts of molesting a 14-year-old boy in 1983, sat with his face buried in his hands as the sentence was handed down by Municipal Judge Bruce A. Clark.

“Mr. De France is exactly what the people had in mind when they passed the three-strikes legislation,” said Clark, who agreed to recommend to the state Department of Corrections that De France be allowed to serve his sentence at Atascadero State Prison.

De France pleaded guilty last month to six counts of sodomy, oral copulation and committing lewd acts upon a child under the age of 16.

His sentencing Thursday followed heart-wrenching videotaped testimony from the boy, his mother and his 22-year-old brother, a mentally ill man who said he also was coerced into having sex with De France.

The impoverished and clearly traumatized boy, who met De France while panhandling outside a Port Hueneme adult bookstore his molester was frequenting, said he so far has tested negative for HIV, the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

During a statement lasting about 15 minutes, the boy said he will forever live in fear that he will contract the virus, and wished the worst for his molester.

“I figure in the old days they would take them and tar and feather them if they did something like that,” the boy said during his victim impact statement.

“So far I’ve gotten lucky,” he continued. “I’m not real sure about what the future’s going to be. I know I won’t want to get married because of this. I won’t ever want to have kids . . . because the same thing might happen to them.”

The boy’s mother, during her videotaped statement, said she fears every time her two sons are tested for the virus.

“It’s not the system’s fault,” she said, referring to the judicial system that had freed De France on parole. “It’s the guy that’s on parole, the guy that’s done the crime, that thinks he can get away with it when he knows he’s going to get caught.”

The boy’s brother, who was shopping inside the adult bookstore the day his brother met De France, said he blames himself because “I didn’t punch the guy.”

“I just want it over,” the brother said. “I want to see this dude dead.”

Deputy Public Defender Doug Daily, who would not say whether his client had full-blown AIDS, described De France as “absolutely devastated.”

“He was completely forthcoming in confessing what he had done here,” Daily said, “and how much pain he caused.”

Prosecutors said De France and the victim met six times during September and October at the Motel 6 on Johnson Drive in Ventura.

When police searched De France’s Santa Barbara home, they found not only the man’s HIV test results, but state-of-the-art computer equipment and evidence that De France was heavily involved in trading child pornography over the Internet.

Also investigators seized a computer disk file with the boy’s name on it, suggesting to Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward Ulloa that photographs De France took of the 5-foot-2-inch, 106-pound Port Hueneme boy being molested were also circulated on the World Wide Web.

“The whole case is a tragedy,” Ulloa said. “ How can [the boy and his family] feel when they have to get tested in three months, and three months after that, and three months after that?”

The sentence, he said, “may be some consolation, but the effect on their lives doesn’t seem worth it.”