Ex-coach gets 36 years for sex abuse of boys
Volunteer at Highland Park high school had assaulted five young football players.
A former Franklin High School football coach was sentenced Friday to more than 36 years in state prison for sexually assaulting five boys.
Jaime Jimenez, 48, of Los Angeles was a volunteer coach who assisted the fulltime staff.
Authorities said Jimenez’s abuse of football players at the Highland Park high school stretched as far back as 2002 and that he pursued boys from then until his 2015 arrest.
In November, Jimenez pleaded no contest to two felony counts each of continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14 years old and lewd acts on a child 14 to 15 years old, and to one misdemeanor count of sexual battery. He was originally charged with 32 felony counts.
Jimenez’s victims ranged from 13 to 16 years old.
During a preliminary hearing last year, underage and adult witnesses testified that for years, Jimenez gave them rides from practice and invited students to his house to play computer games and to watch TV. They frequently slept over; sometimes he plied them with alcohol, they said.
He allegedly ratcheted up sexual contact, moving from touching to masturbation and sodomy. Jimenez knew some of his alleged victims when they were in elementary school; one testified that the abuse began when he was 9.
Vince Finaldi, the attorney for several victims who are suing the Los Angeles Unified School District, said school officials should have suspected inappropriate contact with one of his clients.
“Teachers and administrators would see him coming and going in [Jimenez’s] car, and they know that is against policy,” he said.