Court Cases Prolong the Nightmare for 2 Sides : Law: Civil trials starting today continue a six-year battle between an Orange family and a man who was acquitted of the molestation of their daughter.

In an unusual turn of legal events, a controversial 1987 criminal case involving allegations of child molestation and destroyed evidence has spawned two civil trials that will be fought in Superior Court beginning today.

The two lawsuits promise to prolong a six-year battle over unproven accusations that an illegal immigrant molested a young Orange girl, a legal fracas that has already taken a heavy toll on both sides, emotionally and financially.

Marri Derby, public defender for Rony F. Rubio, who was acquitted of the molestation more than four years ago, charged that it was abusive for the girl’s parents to sue Rubio “after he had been through so much already.”

“Now they’re going to sue him for something he didn’t do? When is this nightmare going to end for him?”

Hyatt Seligman, the girl’s father, asks the same question about himself and his family.

“You have no idea how much suffering this case has caused me and my family,” he said. “Words cannot convey the injustice that is being done to us on a daily basis by this nightmare.”

Before his acquittal, Rubio spent 18 months in jail during legal wrangling over the case. After the not guilty verdict, he was deported to his native Guatemala.

Seligman, who ran for Los Angeles district attorney in 1984, said he and his family have lived with the trauma of what they believe is an incorrect verdict in the molestation case, and embarrassment over revelation of a sex tape at the center of the case.

The civil cases stem from claims that Rubio, who in 1987 was working as a live-in gardener in the Seligmans’ Orange home, molested the couple’s 7-year-old daughter. A jury acquitted Rubio of the charges after less than three hours of deliberation in February, 1990.

In 1992, Orange County Superior Court Judge Jonathan H. Cannon, who presided at the trial, granted Rubio an “order of factual innocence,” a rare ruling that directed that all criminal records involving his case be sealed and then destroyed.

At Rubio’s trial, Derby argued that the girl had accidentally viewed a sexually explicit home video made by her father and her stepmother, court reporter Robin Seligman. The 20 minutes of sexual scenes were recorded at the beginning of a tape marked “Superman,” which originally contained a television broadcast and was stored in an unmarked envelope at the top of a hall closet.

Rubio, who had no previous criminal record, told police he found the tape by accident and played it, thinking it was the “Superman” movie.

When the sex scenes came on, Rubio said, he saw that the girl was watching it through a crack in the door, whereupon he turned it off and closed the door.

Derby argued at Rubio’s preliminary hearing and later at his trial that the girl subsequently accused Rubio of committing the same sexual act depicted in the tape. She said the molestation took place in the family’s garage.

The girl told police that she saw her father and stepmother on the tape. But the scenes she witnessed were not what caused her to claim that Rubio molested her, she told police.

“Rony (Rubio) got the idea” for the assault from watching the tape, the girl told police, and then acted on it.

While Rubio sat in jail for nearly a year, held on $50,000 bond, the Seligmans resisted subpoenas to turn over the tape to the court, with Hyatt Seligman serving as his own attorney. In 1988, a state appeals court unanimously ordered the couple to give the tape to the judge in the case, to determine whether it was relevant and admissible.

At that time, Robin Seligman, testifying under a grant of immunity, revealed that she had erased the sections of the tape showing sexual activity between the Seligmans almost a year before, without her husband’s knowledge.

“I wasn’t going to turn (the tape) over to anyone,” Robin Seligman told the judge. “I always, always felt it was (a matter of) marital privilege.”

After Robin Seligman’s disclosure, Rubio was tried on two counts of child molestation, facing a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Rubio and the Seligmans’ daughter testified, along with medical experts for both sides.

After less than three hours of deliberations, the jury found Rubio not guilty. Ten of the jurors later told Rubio and his attorney that they believed him innocent, she said.

By this time, the slightly built defendant had spent 18 months in jail, where, as an accused child molester, he was himself sexually assaulted by other inmates, he said. After his acquittal, he was immediately taken from jail by the Immigration and Naturalization Service and deported to Guatemala.

In 1990, Derby asked Judge Cannon to issue the order of factual innocence in an attempt to clear her client’s name.

“I was furious,” Derby said, arguing that “it’s the right thing to do to right this wrong.”

But prosecutor Dennis D. Bauer said that he “opposed that motion strenuously. I don’t think it was founded in fact. . . . I believe that the standard required for a prosecutor to ethically prosecute charges was met then and I think that it continues to be met today. If I could retry the case, I would.”

After the order was issued, Rubio was legally readmitted to the United States. Now 28, he lives with his parents in El Toro, works as a hotel busboy, takes English classes at night and is engaged to be married, said John W. Barton, who is representing Rubio in his civil suit against the Seligmans.

Rubio has sued the Seligmans for $2 million, charging that he languished in jail because the couple allegedly destroyed a tape that could have helped free him.

The Seligmans, on behalf of their daughter, filed suit against Rubio for sexual molestation. However, their attorney, Robert Moss, contacted Rubio’s attorney and said that if Rubio dropped his lawsuit, the Seligmans would drop theirs. Rubio refused.

While a criminal conviction for child molestation requires a finding of guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt,” decided by a unanimous jury, a plaintiff’s verdict on the same charge requires only a “preponderance of evidence,” decided by nine jurors.

It’s a “whole new ballgame in what can be accomplished,” said Moss, the Seligmans’ lawyer. “There are different rules of evidence as well.”

Since Rubio has almost no money, though, is the Seligmans’ suit against him a matter of vindication or vindictiveness?

“There is vindication in the sense that (the girl) believes that she was molested,” Moss said. “She maintains that while she may not be able to collect a judgment, she does want the truth known that he did molest her, and that’s the motivation for the suit.”

By a quirk of the court calendar, both lawsuits are scheduled to be tried this morning, in separate courtrooms.

However, by state statute, Seligmans’ suit takes precedence over Rubio’s because it involves a minor charging sex abuse. Rubio’s lawsuit will probably be postponed.