Molestation Suspect Faces 4 Accusers : Hearing: Alleged crimes occurred between 1967-72. The women testify against the defendant, now 64.

A Santa Clarita man who allegedly molested four young girls more than 20 years ago came face-to-face with his now-adult accusers Wednesday in court, where all of the women testified that he had repeatedly molested them.

William Lynch, 64, pleaded not guilty earlier this month to 14 counts of lewd conduct with a minor. The charges were brought against him under a new state law that allows prosecutors to file charges in child molestation cases within a year of the date a crime is reported to police, regardless of when it was allegedly committed.

Prosecutors used the law to charge Lynch with molesting three sisters and their childhood friend between March, 1967, and July, 1972. Lynch’s ex-girlfriend has been charged as an accomplice.

Lynch, who often baby-sat the sisters, allegedly molested them at his Van Nuys apartment and later at a house he purchased in Saugus.

During a preliminary hearing Wednesday in Downtown Los Angeles Municipal Court, Deputy Dist. Atty. Francesca Frey asked the oldest sister, now 37, whether she was ever asked to go to Lynch’s bed, to which the woman replied “yes.”

“What would you wear,” Frey asked.

“Nothing,” the woman replied.

“What did he wear?” Frey asked.

“Nothing,” the woman said.

The woman testified that on one occasion Lynch “rubbed his penis” on her vagina while she was in his bedroom. She testified that she moved in with her father when she turned 13 because Lynch had told her he expected to have intercourse with her at that age.

“As a child I was terrified that anyone would find out,” the woman said. “I figured there was something wrong with me. By the time I was able to say the words I was 26 and the (former) statute of limitations had run out.”

Under cross-examination by Lynch’s defense attorney, Frank Di Sabatino, the woman testified she told her husband about the alleged incidents when she was 26, and about two years later discussed them with her younger sister, who confessed that she too had been molested by Lynch.

“I was shocked,” the woman testified, breaking into tears and removing her glasses.

“I told her if I had known for a second I would have told dad,” she said.

The woman’s two younger sisters later testified during the hearing about the times Lynch allegedly molested them.

One sister, who is now 37, testified that she awoke one morning at Lynch’s apartment to find that her sleeping bag had been opened, her panties removed and Lynch was fondling her. The woman’s younger sister, now 30, then testified that Lynch tried unsuccessfully to have intercourse with her when she was 7 years old.

Lynch’s ex-girlfriend, Mildred Fleetwood, 60, has pleaded not guilty to charges that she aided and abetted the molestation of the sisters’ childhood friend, who said she remembered details of the alleged attacks during a 1992 therapy session. The three sisters denied that their testimony represented “recovered memory,” saying they never forgot the alleged molestations.

The fourth woman, now 35, took the stand late Wednesday afternoon and is expected to finish testifying today, clearing the way for the judge to determine whether there is enough evidence to send the case to Superior Court for trial.

The fourth woman testified Wednesday that she took part in numerous sex acts involving Lynch and Fleetwood between 1968 and 1972.

Prosecutors submitted into evidence audiotapes of five phone calls the woman secretly recorded while talking to Lynch and an audiotape made in November, when the woman wore a concealed microphone into Lynch’s home. The contents were not revealed.

Pictures that Lynch allegedly took of the woman in the nude when she was a girl, along with other photos of Lynch and Fleetwood, were also submitted into evidence.

Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills) wrote the law used in the prosecution of Lynch and Fleetwood after learning of the case of Susan Jarreau, an Encino resident who said she did not remember being sexually abused until more than 10 years after it happened.

Jarreau could not file criminal charges against her abuser because the state statute of limitations, covering all crimes but murder, imposed a time limit on prosecutions of from two to six years from the time the acts occurred.