A jury has convicted Bret Marquis, a 48-year-old San Diego man, of oral copulation with a minor under the age of 16. The jury reached its verdict on Friday, March 19, convicting Marquis on one of three counts of oral copulation charged by the District Attorney’s office.

Carlton Hershman, of the San Diego Police Department’s sex crimes division, began to investigate Marquis in March of 2003. Child Protective Services had filed Marquis’ name with the SDPD after Dr. Alan Brown, a local physician, reported to them that a 15-year-old patient had told him of the nature of his relationship with Marquis. Hershman turned over his findings to the District Attorney’s office and the complaint against Marquis was filed on May 22, 2003.

“There was oral copulation between [the victim] and Bret Marquis,” Deputy District Attorney Patrick Espinoza, the prosecutor in the case, told the Gay & Lesbian Times. “They never interviewed Mr. Marquis, because he had an attorney who was representing him – his brother David Semco, who’s a lawyer in town. The investigation focused around attempting to corroborate what had happened.”

Hershman said he relied on interviews with the 15-year-old victim to construct the case against him.

“Particularly important was [the victim] describing in detail the scars on Bret’s body and the size of Bret’s penis, and he explained that Mr. Marquis’ penis was no larger than three inches erect,” Espinoza went on to say.

Detective Hershman obtained a court order forcing Marquis to allow pictures to be taken of his body and his penis to corroborate the victim’s story.

In a 2003 story on foster care for gay youth, the victim, who went by the name “Alex” for the story, spoke with the Gay & Lesbian Times about Marquis and how the two first encountered one another.

“There was this one guy at The Living Room [coffee shop], that was always there,” the victim said last year. “Bret, he is very well known. People know he’s a pedophile, they just choose not to see it. He would go in there all the time with different boys and buy them stuff.”

The victim, who had run away from home after his mother found out he was gay, went on to say that he survived on the streets by working as a prostitute in Balboa Park.

“He stuck around for a while, made me believe that he loved me, so I stayed with him,” he went on to say. “He wasn’t very attractive, but he had money to take care of me and he showed me the attention I wanted and needed. … He even took me to his boat once and he said that ‘if you want my help you have to sleep with me’ and so I did. I slept with him on his boat in the Sea World Marina.”

Of the three counts of oral copulation that the D.A.’s office tried to get a conviction on, it was the incident on the boat that the jury eventually found Marquis guilty of. The other two alleged incidents occurred in Marquis’ home.

The case was further complicated when it went to trial, because the victim was not available to appear in court to testify against Marquis, and the D.A.’s office had to rely on testimony from the preliminary hearing for the criminal trail.

“[The victim] testified in the preliminary hearing in June [2003],” Espinoza said. “At the time of trial, and there were many trial dates, it kept getting continued – he was no longer available. He was placed in a facility in Mexico. His mother, I believe, found him. He was living as a runaway and she found him and put him in this locked facility in Mexico.”

Because the victim was a minor and outside of the United States, the D.A.’s office could not use the state subpoena process to get the victim back into the country to testify. His mother chose not to bring him to court for an appearance before the jury.

“It’s extremely difficult [to get a conviction] because oftentimes the jury wants to hear live testimony from the victim because they are asked to make a factual call, and when victims aren’t available that makes it much more difficult,” Espinoza said, speaking to the problematic nature of only being able to use testimony from preliminary hearings.

At trial, the defense brought in many witnesses to call into question the credibility of the victim, who was not present to respond to challenges. In addition to his history of prostitution, which was discussed in his preliminary hearing testimony, the defense addressed the victim’s history of drug abuse, which included an arrest by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Defense witnesses also claimed the victim was trying to recruit others to come forward so that he could profit from the “false allegations against Bret.”

“We would just have to just show the bias of these defense witnesses and raise some questions to show whether they had any credibility themselves,” Espinoza said. “I think, ultimately, … the jury heard a lot of this damaging testimony to [the victim’s] credibility, [but] by their verdict it shows that they believe that the crime did happen.”

Marquis is awaiting sentencing on Monday, April 19. He faces up to three years in prison, but with no prior convictions he could avoid prison and serve probation time. Marquis will be registered as a sexual offender, and the judge in the case has banned him from Internet connection and from The Living Room in Hillcrest.