PORTSMOUTH — An illegal alien was sentenced to serve a year in jail — with another year suspended — after being found guilty of two counts of sexually assaulting a minor in a Water Country wave pool.
It is the second case of a Lynn, Mass., man being convicted of sexual assault at the Lafayette Road theme park in as many years.
Following a 2½-hour trial Tuesday, Marvin Hernandez, 27, a Mexican national who was living in Lynn, was found guilty of two counts sexual assault. The convictions assert that he twice put his hands inside the front of a 14-year-old girl's bikini bottom at the family water park.
For one of the guilty findings, Hernandez was sentenced to serve a year in the Rockingham County House of Corrections, with no suspended time and 128 days credit for pretrial confinement. For the second conviction, Judge Sawako Gardner imposed a one-year suspended sentence pending two years of good behavior, while noting the only reason she did so is because Hernandez is expected to be held by federal immigration authorities.
A related felony count of criminal restraint is pending in Rockingham County Superior Court.
Hernandez's public defender, Deanna Campbell, informed the court that she intends to appeal the convictions at the superior court.
Six witnesses testified during Hernandez's trial, including Water Country employees Tim Jordan and Ryan Calista, detail officer Wayne Young and Portsmouth patrolman Laura Perslow.
The victim also took the witness stand, testifying that on Aug. 5, Hernandez grabbed the inner tube she was floating in and sexually assaulted her twice.
The high school freshman told the court she was "100 percent sure" it was Hernandez who assaulted her.
"He touched me on my private parts — inside my bathing suit," the girl testified. "I was shocked. I tried to swim away, but he was holding me and he did it again."
Through a Spanish-speaking interpreter, Hernandez said, "No, never."
Campbell told the court that if there was any contact between the two, it was a "potential accident" and not "for the purpose of sexual gratification." To prove the point, she displayed a video image of the wave pool to the judge, reportedly depicting the "controlled chaos" of the crowded and turbulent Water Country wave pool.
The crowded wave pool defense was entered previously in the local district court by Christopher Andino, also of Lynn, who was 19 when he was arrested July 24, 2005, at Water Country. The following February he was found guilty, also by Gardner, of two counts of sexual assault and two counts of simple assault.
The guilty findings affirmed police allegations that he fondled the breasts of teen girls in the wave pool and he was sentenced to 90 days in the county jail and court-ordered to enter a sex offender program.
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