Mercedes Carrera and her boyfriend (husband?) have now been in jail for two years, facing the very serious allegations of sexually abusing a child under 10 years of age.
The case has faced delay after delay, dragging this case out.
However, it doesn’t seem to be the prosecutor causing these delays. Almost all of them have been because of the defendants for one reason or another.
This time the deal was a little more interesting.
Mercedes Carrera’s lawyer, Joshua Castro, has not appeared in any of the last 5 hearings. He hasn’t been seen since last August. Since then, Anthony Costanzo has been acting as her attorney.
On the January 7th hearing, court documents reveal that he has asked the court to be relieved as her counsel due to an unspecified “conflict.” But which attorney has the conflict? We aren’t sure? Is it Joshua Castro or Anthony Costanzo?
For now, her attorney of record is Geoff Newman, a Rancho Cucamonga criminal defense lawyer.
It’s been two years since the original arrest, and some people have forgotten the details or weren’t aware of them at all since they are new to the industry. They had a preliminary hearing on August 8th of last year where the prosecutors played an audio of the victim, a nine-year-old child, detailing incidents of sexual contact with both Mercedes Carrera and her husband, Daemon Cris.
The child said she was sexually assaulted multiple times over a four-month period. In addition to the 8 charges of a sexual nature, the police also found meth and two loaded guns at their place of residence.
But let’s review the sexual charges as they are the most abhorrent.
The abuse took the form of “inappropriate touching, oral copulation, and digital penetration.” For those that don’t know, digital penetration means to penetrate the vagina or anus using the fingers.
On Thursday, January 31, 2019, deputies were notified of sexual acts against a minor female victim, which occurred in the city of Rancho Cucamonga. Detectives from Rancho Cucamonga assumed the investigation and conducted an extensive interview with a minor female victim. Detectives learned she was sexually abused several times by, Smith (Mercedes Carrera) and Whitney (Daemon Cris). The sexual abuse consisted of inappropriate touching, oral copulation, and digital penetration, which occurred over four months.
On Friday, February 1, 2019, detectives served a search warrant at their residence and contacted Smith (Mercedes Carrera) and Whitney (Daemon Cris) in the home. A search of the residence was conducted, and detectives located a large amount of evidence corroborating the victim’s statement. Additionally, detectives located methamphetamine and two loaded handguns in the home.
On the 75-minute audio recording of an interview conducted in January of 2019, by San Bernardino Sheriff’s Deputy Steven Theis, the child describes what she called “cuddle sessions” during which Mercedes Carrera and Daemon Cins repeatedly touched her vagina. The girl also alleged to the deputy that on at least one occasion, one of the pair inserted a finger into her vagina.
Mercedes Carrera has publicly acknowledged that the child making the allegations is her daughter, with her former husband. She and Cins have denied the allegations, and in a public statement, and have said that the accusations come from the child’s father (her ex-husband), whom she calls “a fundamentalist Christian.”
Last week, my husband and I [were] arrested on charges of molesting my nine-year-old daughter, the absolute worst crime I can imagine. The charges were filed by her father, my ex-partner (a fundamentalist Christian). He is trying to take custody of our child from me. The charges are absolutely false and horrifying, and a last ditch effort to keep me from contact with my daughter for the rest of my life. I am so worried for her. Her life is shattered. Life will never be the same for any of us. We are struggling to make sense of this nightmare. This is a no-bail offense, so we are stuck in jail until we are cleared. We are facing decades in prison and do not even have money for a lawyer. We do not know what to do, but I ask that you all know me for who I am, and know that neither I nor my husband would ever, ever do anything like this to any child, let alone my beloved daughter.
The charges against both Carrera and Cins include 10 counts of sexual penetration/oral copulation with a minor under 10 years of age and one count of sexual intercourse/sodomy with the same child.
What we do know for sure is the couple lived in an apartment where they regularly filmed adult content when the child was present in the home, even if she was in another room, she was, in fact, present in an APARTMENT while pornographic content was produced.
In addition to that, witnesses who knew the couple have come forward to claim that they were aware of two other male performers who stayed with the couple, often sleeping on their couch, and would film content with them in the apartment – the apartment where the child victim lived.
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