The People v. Austin

BACKGROUND

Viewed in accordance with the usual rule of appellate review (People v. Ochoa (1993) 6 Cal.4th 1199, 1206), the evidence established the following. 1. Prosecution evidence. C.L. was born in China in 1994, and defendant Austin is her step-father. After Austin married C.L.‟s mother, they brought C.L. to the United States in 2005 when she was 11 years old. Before that, Austin lived with C.L. and her mother in China for about a year while they waited for C.L.‟s visa application to be approved. Starting in China, C.L.‟s relationship with Austin was that of father-daughter. He taught her English and, when she came to the United States, he helped her with her homework and cooked for her and her mother. C.L. loved Austin as a father. When they first moved to the United States, C.L. had her own bedroom. But her parents later rented out some of the rooms in their house, so C.L. moved into their bedroom. She had her own bed on one side of the room, located behind a partition. At the beginning of 2009,2 C.L.‟s mother went on a trip to China. While she was away, Austin asked C.L. to sleep in his bed with him because he felt lonely. C.L. testified she complied “[b]ecause he would…