Two South Bay women testified tearfully this week against a man they say offered them both a job to clean his house, but then sexually assaulted them at knifepoint.
Defense attorney Lesley Wolf, who represents George Moreland, 47, of Spring Valley, told San Diego Superior Court jurors that Moreland paid hundreds of dollars to the women for sex and it was consensual.
“He’s not proud of what he did. He is married and he stepped outside the bonds of his marriage,” said Wolf to the seven man, five woman jury.
“She said no,” said Deputy District Attorney Rachel Cano about each victim. She told jurors both women were afraid of what Moreland would do with the knife, and they unwillingly took off their clothes in fear. She said that DNA evidence links Moreland to the assaults and neither woman knew the other.
“He made her dance naked in front of him,” said Cano about one victim.
The first victim, 28, testified Monday and identified Moreland as the man who struck up a conversation with her on July 6, 2009, while she was walking near Bonita Road. She agreed to clean his house and they made an appointment for the next day.
She said he picked her up in Bonita, but after arriving at his home, he pulled a knife and ordered her to disrobe. She testified she did so because she was very afraid. He later took her to San Ysidro and she called San Diego Police from a pay phone.
Tape of the 911 call was played to the jury in which a Spanish interpreter told a dispatcher what the victim said. “He told me that on Friday, he would see me again. And I am very afraid,” said the woman while sobbing on the tape.
The second victim, who is in her 40s, testified Tuesday that she met Moreland in Chula Vista on Oct. 1, 2009, and she agreed to accompany him in his white van to his home, where she was later sexually assaulted.
Moreland is charged with four counts of forcible oral copulation, two counts of sexual battery by restraint, two counts of digital penetration, kidnapping and false imprisonment of both women, attempted sodomy, and two counts of assault with intent to commit oral copulation.
Wolf said her client would testify.
Cano said Moreland was convicted in 1997 of tying up a woman where he worked at an electronics store. Wolf said “he snapped” in the 1997 case which ended his career in the Navy and his wife divorced him. Wolf said he was paroled in 2002 and remarried.
