Pedro Martinez, acquitted of abusing children at the Hesperia school where he worked as a janitor, has countersued for malicious prosecution and violation of his 14th Amendment rights.
Martinez claims both the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office coerced false confessions from elementary schoolers.
A separate civil suit filed by students of Maple Elementary School has not been resolved.
“After 22 years of marriage, and without any legitimate evidence and with overwhelming exculpatory evidence, Mr. Martinez—a law-abiding citizen who never had even as much as a parking ticket—was arrested, charged with multiple counts of child sexual assault, publicly humiliated and demonized, and wrongfully prosecuted while being forced to suffer almost five years of incarceration until he was acquitted by a jury of all charges on Dec. 11, 2023,” his complaint says.
The entire case against Martinez was based on the imagination of one of the boys’ mother’s girlfriends, Magdalena Serna, the complaint claimed. Martinez described Serna as “a self-confessed opioid addict with a criminal history who had repeatedly made multiple extremely similar allegations against others,” who had herself been abusing the children. The complaint claims that Serna was charged with abuse of her girlfriend’s boys in January 2020.
Los Angeles Superior Court’s online case access portal shows that Serna was charged with four counts of willful cruelty to a child with possible injury due to actions on Dec. 9, 2019, but each count has been dismissed.
Detectives and prosecutors then coerced children to point their finger at Martinez, his complaint claims.
“These Defendants hid exculpatory evidence, coached witnesses, and rather than even review the overwhelming exculpatory evidence, sought to hide such evidence from the jury,” the complaint claims.
Martinez was charged Dec. 1, 2018 on four counts of sexual penetration/oral copulation with a child younger than 10 years old, four counts of lewd acts with a child, one count of distributing pornography to a minor and two counts of sexual intercourse with a child younger than 10.
Martinez’ countersuit brings 24 claims, including violation of his 14th Amendment rights, malicious prosecution, false imprisonment, civil rights conspiracy, investigatory bias, supervisory and municipal liability, unlawful coercion of witness statements and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
His suit claims that two of the boys whom he had been suspected of molesting had been sexually abused in foster care, and had begun molesting other boys after being returned to their mother’s custody. These two boys were 6 years old and 3 years old, his suit claimed.
The 6-year-old reported to Serna, his mother’s girlfriend, that he was molested by three boys at Maple Elementary School, Martinez’ complaint claimed. Serna believed, based on this, that the four boys had been molested by the same adult male, his complaint claims. The complaint continues to say that Serna found Martinez’ name on the school’s employee roster, and that the boy appeared to recognize the name.
Serna reported a seven-hour conversation in which the boy explained how Martinez had abused him and the other boys, the complaint says. A detailed seven-hour conversation was not possible due to the boy’s learning challenges, the complaint says.
Serna reported her suspicions to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, who ran a Sexual Assault Response Team exam that did not find the boy sexually abused, Martinez’ complaint claims. The department relayed the tip to the San Bernardino’s Sheriff’s Department.
Deputy Jonathan Womelsdorf failed to work with the department’s Crimes Against Children Unit, and interviewed the boys in a leading way that was contrary to the county’s training, the complaint says.
Womelsdorf asked leading questions, refused to accept denials, threatened to call the boys’ fathers if they continued to deny abuse, and rewarded the boys with candy when they claimed sexual assault, the complaint claims.
Further interviews of the children failed to provide evidence of statements of abuse, the complaint claims.
Criminal Case No. FVI19000218
Civil Case No. CIVDS1904175
Countersuit Case No. 5:24-cv-02557
Deena Pribble prosecuted.
Ian Wallach defended.
Read Martinez’s complaint here
Read our previous coverage:
Hesperia elementary students regain case claiming janitor’s sexual abuse
Elementary-school sexual abuse-case dismissal reversed
