Victims Confront Rapist at Sentencing

A notorious serial rapist was confronted by his young victims Tuesday in a tense, tearful hearing that ended with a judge handing down one of the harshest sentence ever dispensed for such crimes: 101 years in prison.

Steven Morales, who terrorized coastal Orange County with a string of seven sexual attacks on women and girls as young as 13, sat silently as a trail of victims and their families looked him in the eyes and lashed out.

“Look at me!” yelled one sobbing teenage girl, slamming her fist on the lectern. “How can you sit in this courtroom with all these wounded souls and say you’re sorry and expect it to be all OK? I will fear people for the rest of my life.”

Morales, a 33-year-old former construction worker, turned to face his victims from his chair but showed little emotion.

Another teenage victim told Morales how her family was shattered forever the night he leaped at her from behind her bedroom door and assaulted her. “It wasn’t just the people who were attacked. It’s your wife. It’s your two kids. It’s every one of the girls’ families. It’s their friends,” she said.

Morales attacked mostly teenage girls during an eight-month rampage in 1997 and 1998 in several upscale Orange County neighborhoods. Some girls were kidnapped off the streets at gunpoint. He attacked others after sneaking into their homes. After raping one Seal Beach victim, he called a couple of times to torment her and warn her not to tell authorities.

Police cracked the case after linking Morales to a parking ticket he received near the home of one of his victims. Two Huntington Beach sisters later identified Morales from a series of photographs, and Morales was arrested in July 1999. DNA evidence was also used to link the crimes.

Morales pleaded guilty last week; under the sentence handed down Tuesday, he will be eligible for parole when he is 118. Officials said the sentence is unusually harsh given the fact that he pleaded guilty; rapists in the past have received long sentences but few have been deprived of the possibility of parole for as many years.

Police and victims remain baffled by Morales’ motives. Morales, a father of two children, provided no insight into his behavior during a brief statement he read in court.

“You may wonder, why you?” he said, addressing the victims. The crimes, he said, “were no more planned than my wanting my wife, our children, families, and friends to feel pain.”

In a clear, loud voice, Morales continued: “Explaining this tragedy is never going to be easy, and for lack of a better word, unfortunately tragedies similar to this happen to many people all over the world.”

Morales’ statements enraged one father. “Face me!” he screamed to Morales, who turned toward him without hesitation. “When you’re put in your cell at night . . . you’ll sit and wonder that [your daughter] doesn’t run into [someone] like you.”

One girl was amazed that Moreno was a father: “You have a daughter, how could you do that? . . . You make me sick,” she said.