Mercedes Carrera Pre-Trial Hearing Hit With 10th Postponement

LOS ANGELES—A pre-trial hearing in the Mercedes Carrera child sexual abuse case has been postponed repeatedly, but yesterday the number of delays hit double figures. According to court documents, San Bernardino Superior Court Judge Katrina West granted a new postponement during a court appearance Thursday, the date that had been set for the hearing. The new pre-trial date was set for February 5, with a trial date no later than April 6 — unless there is a further delay in the case. By law, any delay past 60 days must receive the consent of the defendants. The delay is the 10th since an August 8 hearing at which prosecutors played an audio tape of the alleged victim, a nine-year-old girl, detailing what she said were a series of incidents of sexual contact with Carrera and co-defendant Daemon Cins, the longtime adult performer’s partner. Carrera has publicly acknowledged that the child making the allegations is her daughter. She and Cins have denied the allegations, and in a public statement has said that the accusations come from the child’s father, whom she described in a statement as “a fundamentalist Christian.”   The charges against both Carrera and Cins include 10 counts of sexual penetration/oral copulation with a minor under 10 years of age, and one count of sexual intercourse/sodomy with the same child. On the 75-minute audio recording of an interview conduced in January, 2019, by San Bernardino Sheriff’s Deputy Steven Theis, the child describes what she called “cuddle sessions” during which Carrera and Cins repeatedly touched her vagina. The girl also alleged to the deputy that on at least one occasion, one of the pair inserted a finger into her vagina. Carrera and Cins were arrested on February 1, 2019, in Rancho Cucamonga, California. They were granted bail amounts of $2 million, which neither has been able to meet. As a result, the pair have sat behind bars for almost two years as they await a trial. Photo By Baldwin Saintilus / Wikimedia Commons