By PAUL ANDERSON
A 53-year-old man repeatedly sexually assaulted two boys he tutored in the Anaheim area from when they were 8 and 9 until they were 13 and 14, a prosecutor told jurors Monday as the defendant, who was representing himself, said the accusers were lying.
Zeta “Jimmy” Dhanapanth is charged with a dozen felony counts of lewd or lascivious acts with a minor younger than 14 and a count of possession of child pornography.
Deputy District Attorney Sarah Rahman told jurors in a Santa Ana courtroom that a tutor “is a person who is supposed to make learning fun… but unfortunately for (the two victims) their tutor was this defendant.”
The prosecutor alleged the defendant would “test the waters” initially by sitting close to them or touching their legs and would then move on to “putting his hands in their shorts” and to more explicit sex acts.
“Both boys needed help in English and math,” Rahman said.
Dhanapanth taught in an after-school program at Anaheim Indepencia Center from 2012 through 2016. He volunteered for the School on Wheels program, which would bring tutors to the homes of needy students, Rahman said.
In one instance, the defendant sodomized one of the victims with a sex toy in his van, Rahman said.
“Over the years (the boy) would ask is this normal?” Rahman said, adding he would also ask, “Do adults to this? Does this make me gay?”
Dhanapanth would show the boys pornographic videos as well as “fan fiction” stories from the web about sex between adults and children, Rahman said.
He did so “to convince (the boys) all of this was normal,” Rahman said.
The defendant would give one of the boys Legos, “which (the victim) loved but the family could no longer afford,” Rahman said.
When the defendant first tried to “test the waters” with the other victim, “He didn’t like it,” Rahman said.
The boy was taken out of the program but returned to it when he was 11, the prosecutor said. Dhanapanth would also give that boy gifts in exchange for sexual acts, Rahman said.
At one point, a teacher walked in on the defendant with one of the boys in a “compromising situation,” Rahman said.
“Both looked shocked and scared,” Rahman said.
The teacher told her supervisor, who called sheriff’s deputies, Rahman said.
Initially that boy denied anything happened, Rahman said.
Psychologist Jody Ward is expected to testify about Child Abuse Accommodation Syndrome and how underage sex crime victims often do not immediately report abuse, Rahman said.
“When they do, it is years later,” she said.
When investigators searched Dhanapanth’s home they found “Legos in sexual positions,” sex toys, “cookie cutters in sexual positions,” and a variety of electronic devices that contained 16 “very specifically organized videos of child pornography,” Rahman said.
Dhanapanth would also search for “pedophilia” online, Rahman alleged.
Just before trial, Dhanapanth moved to get rid of his court-appointed defense attorney to represent himself. He said he noticed during jury selection that some jurors “didn’t understand me because of my accent,” so he asked to read his opening statement as it was placed on a projector for jurors to read along with him.
Dhanapanth said the allegations are “not supported by any witness … or evidence.”
The defendant, referring to himself in the third person as Jimmy, said he was “very excited” to get a partial scholarship to Baylor University in 1997 and recounted his emigrating from Thailand.
“So when Jimmy arrived he never spoke English before,” he said. “He did not come from a wealthy family.”
He got a job as a server in the campus cafeteria and would daily get recorded lectures from his professors so he could hear the lessons again and better learn English.
When he started tutoring, he said, most of his clients were from “family referrals” of satisfied customers.
Dhanapanth said he sympathized with one of the accusers because of his difficult emigration from Mexico to the U.S. The defendant said the boy was “abandoned” by his parents and cared for by his grandparents.
“He was not able to speak any human language. He was mute,” the defendant said.
The defendant said he helped the boy learn to read and speak from graphic novels and audio books.
“Jimmy was very proud” of the boy, he said.
When the boy’s father pulled him out of tutoring, the defendant said he was “stunned.”
The defendant read the statements from his accusers to police in separate interviews to try to point out what he considered were “inconsistencies.” The statements included explicit and graphic allegations of sexual abuse.
“We all know when people make up a story they try to change it because they can’t remember what they said,” Dhanapanth said. “They want to make the story better.”