Costa Mesa Man Faces 48 Counts of Child Molestation

A Costa Mesa man police call a “prolific predator” has been charged with 48 counts of child molestation in a case in which another man is accused of regularly “selling” his young male children to the suspect for $20 sex sessions, police said Monday.

James Soto Nogales has pleaded not guilty to charges of oral copulation, sodomy and lewd conduct with a child. He is also accused to keeping a “sordid library” of 74 videotapes--each carefully labeled with the first names of 25 Latino boys he is accused of molesting, Costa Mesa Police Lt. Ron Smith said.

His alleged accomplice, Samuel Montes Sr., 28, became a partner in crime with Nogales, 49, after Nogales moved into the apartment where Montes lives with his wife and three children, police said.

Police said Nogales paid Montes $20 to leave him alone with Montes’ two sons, whom he molested on a regular basis. Montes has been arrested and charged with procuring minors to commit sex acts and is charged with molesting his 8-year-old stepson.

But the Montes children’s case was just a part of the intricate web of sex crimes Nogales is accused of weaving, police said.

Nogales allegedly told impoverished Latino families that he was a community outreach worker for Hermano Pablo Ministries, a nonprofit organization in Costa Mesa, befriending the children of the families with gifts of radios, cash and in one case a new pair of shoelaces, Smith said. Though Nogales worked for the ministry briefly, the group says he was not employed in any outreach capacity.

Nogales would lure the boys into motel rooms and videotape them in sex acts with him, Smith said.

“It was nonstop, his pursuit,” Smith said. “We hate to think how many people, trusting families, he betrayed.”

“[Nogales] is like a cancer,” Smith said. “You can just see the cycle of abuse he keeps spreading.”

One of the videotapes seized by police was apparently taken in Mexico. It shows Nogales giving new shoelaces to a small boy; later the two are shown having sex, Smith said.

“It was pitiful, really sad,” Smith said of the clips.

One of the victims told police he met Nogales one afternoon five years ago, when the older man was navigating a remote-controlled toy car through a dirt lot near his house.

Police found three remote-controlled cars when they searched Nogales’ closet-sized storage unit, Smith said.

Nogales met Montes 11 years ago, when Montes was a student at Estancia High School in Costa Mesa, police said.

Police said Nogales spoke at the school under the pretense that he was a community outreach worker for the ministries, and befriended Montes, whom he later molested.

Police suspect that other youths from the school were molested.

Montes’ wife said Monday that she had no idea her children were being victimized by her husband of seven years or by Nogales, who attended their wedding.

“There was nothing, no signs to me,” she said from her apartment Monday. “There was nothing but happiness here.”

When Montes was arrested earlier this month, the couple’s children were taken to Orangewood Children’s Home. Montes’ wife said she has been allowed to visit the children twice, and plans to file for divorce and petition the court to return them to her.

Already she has packed up much of the apartment and made arrangements to live with relatives; social workers have told her the children cannot be returned to the Wilson Street home.

Investigators were able to identify two of the victims shown on the tapes, boys who were molested by Nogales for years in Costa Mesa and who are now adults, Smith said. One appeared on the tapes nine times when he was 14 years old; the other was molested for two years after his 15th birthday, police said.

The other 23 victims shown on the videos are “nameless boys” to police, and detectives suspect some have moved away or lived in Mexico at the time, Smith said.

“Hopefully as this develops more victims will come forward,” he said. “This man has obviously destroyed lives and there is help, counseling, that should be made available to them.”

Linda Stewart, operations manager for Hermano Pablo Ministries, which broadcasts its Spanish language Christian radio broadcasts to 104 countries, said Nogales never was a representative of the organization.

She said he was hired as a technician in its recording studio in 1986 but was fired three years later after a string of on-the-job problems. “There’s no evidence of any kind that he was a representative of our organization of any kind,” Stewart said. “If he went to a school and said that, it just makes me sick to think of it.”

Nogales, who was arrested Sept. 26, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Friday in Orange County Municipal Court. Montes, who was arrested Oct. 2 is scheduled to be arraigned Oct. 23.