HONOLULU (AP) - A Hawaii jury has convicted an adoption advocate of sexually assaulting two girls.
Jurors deliberated for less than three hours Friday before finding Louis Martinez guilty, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported.
He was charged last year of attempted sexual assault involving a girl who was 11 years old in 2011. In 2013, he was charged with sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl. Prosecutors say he assaulted her in her sleep after he gave her three to five shots of hard liquor.
Martinez is the former executive director of an organization that encourages adoption of foster children. Under the name David Louis in 2005, Martinez opened Heart Gallery Hawaii, the local chapter of a national organization that recruits parents for hard-to-adopt foster children by taking photos of the children and displaying them publicly. The Hawaii chapter is no longer operating.
Martinez was extradited to Honolulu from the mainland last year after he fled while on supervised release. He left Hawaii without the court's permission while on release under the supervision of an elderly couple who had adopted him as an adult.
He used the name David Louis in 2006 when he released a book he authored about his experience growing up in foster care in California. "Scars That Can Heal" chronicles getting placed in foster homes 30 times and changing schools 19 times.
Published: Tue, Jan 20, 2015
