Man gets ten years in prison for sex assault of disabled

WAILUKU — For sexually assaulting a mentally disabled woman while filling in as her home care worker, a Waiehu man was sentenced Wednesday to a 10-year prison term.

“You violated her sanctity. You traumatized her. You gave her nightmares,” 2nd Circuit Judge Rhonda Loo said in sentencing Jonathan Delos Santos. “Hard workers and good workers sometimes commit horrible crimes. And this was a horrible crime.

“As a special needs girl, as an autistic girl, she deserved better. She did not deserve to be raped on the floor of her own bedroom.”

Delos Santos, 35, had pleaded no contest to second-degree sexual assault of the 26-yearold woman on March 19, 2016.

That afternoon, when her regular care worker wasn’t available, Delos Santos was hired to go to the woman’s home in Wailuku to help her, the woman’s mother said in court Wednesday. She said her daughter didn’t want to have a male care worker, but she thought it would be OK for one day.

Delos Santos arrived at about 4 p.m. and was alone with the woman for an hour before another family member arrived home, the mother said.

She said her daughter still suffers from nightmares because of what happened.

“My daughter is an adult, but with a very young person inside,” she said, speaking through a Mandarin interpreter. “I have to stand up and tell everybody. He has to get punished so no one will get harmed again.”

Delos Santos, who has been jailed since his arrest in September 2016, had asked to be released and placed on probation.

His father and brother also asked that Delos Santos be allowed to return home to help the family, including his two children.

“It’s clear Jonathan did not understand specifically what he was dealing with at the time of the event,” said defense attorney David Wiltsie. “He immediately realized he had misread the circumstances. He was dealing with somebody who couldn’t give consent.”

Wiltsie said Delos Santos served in the Navy as a medic for eight years from 1999 to 2007.

“He spent time in Afghanistan and Iraq on the front lines dealing with people who were badly injured in

wartime circumstances,” Wiltsie said.

“This is not a run-of-the-mill

type case,” he said. “Jonathan truly is somebody who made a serious mistake but immediately owned up to it.”

Deputy Prosecutor Kristin Coccaro said that Delos Santos

had the woman’s care plan and “knew the abilities of this person before walking in.”

“It’s a case of the strong preying on the weak,” she said in arguing for the 10-year prison term. “It’s a case of an abuse of power of the worst kind.

“He was there to help her. But he didn’t help her. He assessed the situation very quickly and he used her for what he

wanted to use her for.

“She knew enough to say no. But she did not have the skills to get out of the situation.”

After raping the woman, Delos Santos asked her to sign his timesheet so he could get paid, Judge Loo said.

Afterward, the woman spent hours repeating “this painful, embarrassing story” to nurses, doctors and detectives, Loo

said. She said police found DNA matched to Delos Santos on underwear and the carpet of the woman’s bedroom.

Noting that the woman’s mother said she didn’t want to see Delos Santos traumatize another person again, Loo said: “At the very least, we can try and do that for the next 10 years.”

Lila Fujimoto can be reached at lfujimoto@mauinews.com.