A 34-year-old man pleaded not guilty Friday to sexually assaulting four girls in Orange County over a nearly eight-year period.
Juan Carlos Mendez Flores was initially arrested April 24 on suspicion of molesting a girl in unincorporated Anaheim, according to Carrie Braun, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. The suspect was known to the family of the victim, but not related to the girl, Braun said.
The alleged “inappropriate touching” happened about a month before it was reported to sheriff’s investigators, Braun said.
Flores was charged in that case last month, but an amended complaint filed Friday adds charges related to the alleged sexual assaults of three other girls, according to court records.
One girl, who is 10 years old or younger, was sexually assaulted in November of last year, and another girl, who is younger than 14, was attacked in September of last year, according to the criminal complaint.
A third girl was molested in June 2013, when she was 14 or 15 years old; and a fourth girl, who was younger than 14, was assaulted in October 2011, prosecutors allege.
The Orange County District Attorney’s Office did not immediately provide any details on the allegations.
Flores, who entered his plea in the jail courtroom in Santa Ana, was ordered to return to court May 28 for a pretrial hearing in the North Justice Center in Fullerton.
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