Thread: Golden Gate man gets jail, probation in sex case

Golden Gate man gets jail, probation in sex case

But Juan Jose Gomez Lopez probably will be deported back to Mexico and won’t be serving sex-offender probation

By AISLING SWIFT (Contact)
6:32 p.m., Sunday, July 12, 2009


Juan Jose Gomez-Lopez

COLLIER COUNTY — A Golden Gate man who faced life in prison accepted a plea bargain for jail time and 15 years of probation for molesting a 9-year-old girl.

But 33-year-old Juan Jose Gomez Lopez probably won’t be serving the sex-offender probation with a GPS ankle monitor. He’s an illegal alien being held in the county jail pending a deportation hearing — and a trip back to Mexico.

Collier Circuit Judge Frank Baker sentenced Gomez on July 7 to time served in the county jail since his arrest on Dec. 10, 2007, and probation as part of a plea agreement negotiated by Assistant State Attorney Deborah Cunningham and Assistant Public Defender Shannon Brown.

Gomez was charged with capital sexual battery and lewd and lascivious molestation, which are punishable by life in a state prison. Under the plea agreement, he pleaded to attempted sexual battery, a lesser-included charge, a first-degree felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison. Gomez knew the children.

“We made the agreement because we’ve been trying to locate the victim for quite some time,â€

Man arrested after girls tell authorities he molested one of them

By Daily News staff
4:05 p.m., Tuesday, December 11, 2007

A Golden Gate man was arrested Monday, more than six months after two girls reported that he had sexually molested one of them several times over the last two years.

Juan Jose Gomez-Lopez, 31, whose address in Golden Gate was redacted in an arrest report, was arrested Monday at the Collier County jail and charged with one count of sexual battery on a victim under 12.

In early June two girls reported to authorities that Gomez-Lopez molested one of them on several occasions since 2005, according to an arrest report. On one occasion Gomez-Lopez climbed on top of one of the girls while she was in bed and molested her, the girls reported.

The girls told authorities that Gomez-Lopez threatened to kill them if they told anyone what happened.

Attempts to locate Gomez-Lopez for an interview by authorities were unsuccessful until Dec. 6, when he was located in the Collier County jail. Gomez-Lopez denied any inappropriate activity with the girls.

Investigators from the Collier County Sheriff’s Office determined that they had probable cause to believe that on Oct. 8, 2005, Gomez-Lopez committed sexual battery on one of the girls, the arrest report said.

One of the girls was 7 years old at the time of the molestation, while the other was 10 years old, the Sheriff’s Office reported.

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/dec ... _he_moles/