LOCAL : Karate Pro, Escape Artist Gets 17 Years for Molesting 5 Boys
James Allen Hydrick, a professed karate expert and escape artist who allegedly molested five Huntington Beach boys, today was sentenced to 17 years in state prison after pleading guilty to 11 felony child molestation counts.
Hydrick, who once toured the nation in martial arts exhibitions under the name Sir James, was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Luis Cardenas under a plea-bargaining agreement worked out with Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Koski.
Koski said the 30-year-old Hydrick would be eligible for parole in 8 1/2 years.
Prosecutors said Hydrick, who claims to have escaped from half a dozen jails in Georgia, South Carolina and Utah, befriended the victims last summer in Huntington Beach, luring them back to his apartment and molesting them.
Hydrick had professed his innocence in telephone calls to reporters, saying the teen-agers had turned on him for no apparent reason.
Hydrick was extradited from Georgia in January and has been held in the Orange County Jail because of past escape attempts.
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