Fired Officer Convicted in 2 Sex Cases

A former Huntington Beach police officer was convicted Thursday of lewd conduct for sexually molesting a teenage girl while conducting an interview about a statutory rape complaint.

Mark Trachman, 37, was also found guilty in an unrelated case of soliciting a lewd act -- a misdemeanor -- for threatening a 26-year-old woman with a traffic ticket unless she exposed her breasts.

“We are glad we were able to prevent this from happening to other women,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Dan Hess said after the verdict was delivered.

Trachman’s attorney, John Barnett, could not be reached for comment.

The former police officer, who remains free on $150,000 bail, faces up to five years in prison when he is sentenced April 18.

During the Orange County Superior Court trial in Westminster, the 16-year-old girl testified that, during the interview about the statutory rape complaint when she was 14, Trachman touched her breasts and asked her to further expose herself.

In her tearful testimony, the teen said, “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.”

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

Barnett argued that the girl had lied about the officer’s conduct to deflect attention from her own sexual activity.

During the trial, however, jurors heard a recorded conversation between the teen and the officer, apparently confirming her version of events.

The conversation was arranged by police after the teen reported the incident.

In the other case, the driver testified that in May, Trachman stopped her and said she was wearing her seat belt improperly. She said he asked questions regarding her breasts that made her uncomfortable, then asked her to expose her chest. Trachman has been fired from the Huntington Beach Police Department, which he joined in 1999 after spending three years as a police officer in Los Angeles.

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Times staff writer David Haldane contributed to this report.