Jury convicts Oroville man in child molestations

Man faces minimum of 45 years in prison at July sentencing

OROVILLE >> A jury needed less than two hours of deliberation Tuesday afternoon before declaring an Oroville man guilty of molesting two children, one of them between 2005 and 2007 and the other in 2014.

A 24-year-old man contacted the Butte County Sheriff’s Office in September 2020 to report that Lance Prescott Ernest Rogers, 37, had sexually molested him many times between 2005 and 2007 when the victim was age 11-12, in both Oroville and Salida, just north of Modesto. An agreement with the Stanislaus County District Attorney

allowed the prosecution of a sex count from Salida in the Butte County court.

Rogers faces a minimum of 45 years to a maximum of 93 years in prison.

Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey said that after charging Rogers regarding the allegations in the first case, another adult male, 19, came forward in February 2021. Prosecutors then brought an additional case, alleging many years of sexual abuse by Rogers, starting when the victim was age 13 in Oroville in 2014.

The cases were consolidated and tried simultaneously, with the jury hearing four days of testimony over two weeks.

During the trial, jurors heard the 2005-07 victim — now 27 — testify how Rogers

was his babysitter starting when the victim was 10 or 11 and began sexually touching him. The victim told the jury Rogers then became his nanny when his parents were at work. The victim said he came forward when he heard that Rogers was back in town and was seen with other young boys.

The jury also heard from the other victim — now 21 — who described several years of inappropriate sexual touching when he lived with Rogers in 2014, until he moved away several years later. The victim was homeless when his mother abandoned him at 12 years old and he moved in with Rogers, who befriended the victim and a group of other boys about the same age.

Rogers acted as his own attorney in the trial after he fired his assigned public defender.

Testifying from the witness stand on his own behalf, Rogers admitted to the jury he was previously convicted of first-degree residential burglary and possession of child pornography in 2008, and had been sentenced to state prison.

Among the witnesses Rogers called to testify on his behalf were two sex offenders with whom he served time in the Butte County Jail.

Immediately following the jury verdicts, Butte County Superior Court Judge Michael Deems conducted a court trial and found a former “strike” allegation based on the 2008 burglary conviction to be true. Judge Deems set the case for sentencing July 6.