Girl Was Touched by Cop, She Says

Barely speaking above a whisper, a 16-year-old girl testified Tuesday that a Huntington Beach police officer touched her breasts and asked her to expose her genitals during an interview two years ago about a statutory rape complaint.

Mark Trachman, 37, is accused of four counts of lewd conduct upon a child and one count of soliciting a lewd act from a woman during a traffic stop. The incidents allegedly occurred in May 2001, within days of each other.

Trachman, who has been fired from the Huntington Beach police, joined the department in 1999 after three years as a Los Angeles police officer.

The officer came to the family’s home when the parents filed a criminal complaint after learning their daughter had had sex with a boy at her school.

In testimony that began Monday afternoon in Orange County Superior Court in Westminster, the girl said Trachman asked her to expose her breasts, back, buttocks and vagina in the kitchen of her Huntingdon Beach home.

Her parents, who said they didn’t want to hear her account, were in their daughters’ bedroom at the time.

Stopping several times to wipe away tears, the girl, who was 14 at the time of the incident, said she was “uncomfortable” about the touching and the exposure. “I did it because my parents told me to listen to him and I thought he was doing his job because he said he had to do it,” she testified.

According to the girl, Trachman said that his exam required checking her body for bumps, bruises or scars that might have happened during her sexual encounter with a senior from her high school. She added that Trachman asked her “kind of inappropriate” questions about her sexual encounter, such as what kind of underwear she had been wearing.

The girl told her sister about Trachman’s behavior the night he came to her house but did not tell her mother until the next day. The family immediately reported the incident to the Huntington Beach police, and county investigators came to the house the following day. The investigators arranged for her to telephone the officer to gather evidence against him.

Following a script provided by investigators, the girl reminded Trachman about the touching, and Trachman did not deny the actions. Deputy Dist. Atty. Dan Hess played a recording of the conversation Tuesday.

Under cross-examination, the girl acknowledged that she has not fully disclosed her sexual history to her father. Defense attorney John Barnett contends the girl lied about the officer’s conduct to deflect attention from her own sexual activity.

In the incident in which Trachman is accused of asking a woman to expose her breasts, Barnett argues his client did nothing illegal.