An Orange County man serving a 50-year-to-life term for videotaped sex with a 4-year-old girl testified Thursday that he drugged his wife to make her join in and told her the tape would convict her, too, if she went to authorities.
David Shouthy Hwang — who was sentenced in October 2006 after pleading guilty to 60 charges — was the first defense witness in the trial of 28-year-old Sheila Marie Sikat.
Her niece was videotaped four times between Jan. 1. 2001, and Feb. 1, 2003 — on occasions when the Rancho Santa Margarita couple was baby-sitting the girl. According to prosecutors, four hours of tapes were produced.
The two were arrested on Sept. 3, 2003, after Orange County sheriff’s deputies served a search warrant at their home.
Hwang, 36, said the idea of having sex with the girl “germinated” in his mind and he “took advantage of an opportunity.”
Under questioning by defense attorney Ed Munoz, Hwang said he did not share his intent with Sikat, but instead blended two “roofies” — a drug which dulls the senses and causes loss of memory — into a margarita and gave it to her without her knowledge.
Asked if his wife ever became aware of what happened on the tape with the girl, Hwang said, “She remembered some of it. It came back to her. We had an argument about it.”
Sikat threatened to go to authorities, Hwang said, but “I made reference to the fact she was also on the tape and that she would be in trouble, as well.”
Earlier, Hwang admitted that he was manipulative, that Sikat was a dependent person eager to please him, and when she resisted certain demands such as joining with her husband in “three-way” sex, he hit her.
“If we got into an argument over certain things or she didn’t do things a certain way, my temper got the best of me,” Hwang testified.
He said he would hit her “on her arms, legs, her back, sometimes on … the top part of her chest” with both an open and a closed hand. He also admitted punching her in the stomach.
Sikat had faced the same 60 sex-related charges to which her husband pleaded guilty until Wednesday, when Orange County Superior Court Judge Gary Paer dismissed five counts of kidnapping for the purpose of child molesting.
Those charges carried the threat of an indeterminate life-in-prison term that Hwang is now serving, said Senior Deputy District Attorney Beth Carmichael.
But with those counts dismissed, Sikat faces a determinate term, although it can be up to 94 years in prison, Carmichael said.
The prosecutor said outside the courtroom there is “absolutely no evidence on the tape that she [Sikat] is under the influence of a narcotic.”
She told jurors earlier that Sikat was a willing participant who is just as guilty under the law as Hwang.
Sikat is expected to testify when the trial resumes next week, Carmichael said, and closing arguments may take place next Wednesday.
Prosecutors said earlier that the tapes show Hwang, Sikat and the girl engaged in sex, with the wife having sex with her husband, and he having sex with the child.
The girl, who appears to be unconscious on the tapes, has no memory of the molestation, and she did not testify, Carmichael said.
Hwang, who will be eligible for parole when he is 77 or 78 years old, also faces charges of having sex with five young girls in Texas, one as young as 8 months old. But Texas authorities never extradited him, Carmichael said.
Sikat, who met Hwang when he came to California to work in an information technology post at Pacific Mutual in 1998, does not face any charges in Texas, Carmichael said.