Molesting Suspect to Accept Judge’s Prison Term : Sentencing: Seal Beach man who pleaded no contest acquiesces to six-year sentence rather than face a jury.

A man who pleaded no contest to molesting a 12-year-old Seal Beach girl decided Thursday to accept a prison term from a judge rather than face a jury.

Robert Stanfield, 68, of Long Beach will be sentenced July 18 and will be taken immediately into custody. Superior Court Judge Luis A. Cardenas said he gave Stanfield the three weeks to wrap up his business and personal affairs.

“When he comes back,” Cardenas said, “he’d better have his toothbrush.”

Stanfield previously had waived his rights to a jury trial, agreeing to be sentenced by a judge. Cardenas had planned to sentence him to three years in state prison but changed his mind last week after hearing emotional appeals from the victim’s parents and the detective in charge of the case. He then gave Stanfield a choice of six years in prison or trying his luck with a jury.

Stanfield faces 12 felony counts and is free on $10,000 bail. He owns a nutrition store in Seal Beach and was a Sunday school teacher there at Grace Community Church. He also has assisted in chapel services for the Los Angeles Lakers before their games, he said.

Stanfield, who met the girl’s parents last year, learned the couple were going away for a weekend in December and offered to have his 20-year-old daughter look after their child, police said.

Instead, he picked up the girl at her home in Seal Beach, took her to dinner and bought her a pair of panties at a clothing store, the prosecution alleges. After renting two pornographic videotapes, Stanfield took her to a motel across from his house in Long Beach and molested her during the night and the next day at a drive-in movie theater, authorities said. Before taking her back to his house, he took her to see a Christmas play at the Crystal Cathedral.

The girl told a school counselor she was molested and detectives began to investigate the case in December.

The maximum sentence Stanfield could have received in this case is 28 years and eight months, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jane Shade said.

Cardenas said he originally decided on three years because the defendant has never been in trouble with the law.

By state law, anybody sentenced to state prison gets credit for half the term, Shade said. If Stanfield is sentenced for six years, he will serve only three.

Last week, the victim’s parents pleaded with Cardenas for the six-year sentence to give their daughter time to mature to a point where she could deal with Stanfield. The girl suffers from severe depression and recently was placed in a psychiatric facility on her 13th birthday, they said.

Before appearing before Cardenas on Thursday, Stanfield said he regretted his actions that weekend in December but hopes the judge will reduce the sentence back to three years.

“That’s the stupidest thing I did,” Stanfield said of the molestation.

After the court proceedings, the defendant said he will have friends and family members plead on his behalf on July 18, but added that Cardenas probably will not change his mind.

“I will pray,” Stanfield said, “but I don’t think he will.”