Orange County Register

     These are some of the sickest accusations made in an Orange County courtroom: A Rancho Santa Margarita couple charged with molesting a 4-year-old girl and recording the acts on videotape.
     David Shoutyh Hwang, the husband, pleaded guilty more than a year ago and got 50 years in prison — tantamount to a death sentence, Superior Court Judge Gary S. Paer said at the time.
     Sheila Sikat, the wife, went on trial last week before Paer for her alleged role in the molestations (the defense, by the way, is that she was coerced and pressured into participating by her psychotic husband).
     Here is the problem. Deputy District Attorney Beth Carmichael intends to show the videotapes of the sexual activity in the courtroom during her case against Sikat.
      When he sentenced Hwang in October 2006, Paer called the activity on the videotapes “despicable.”  Now he faced the specter of showing the same “despicable” videotapes in an open courtroom. Paer, naturally, didn’t want to do it.
     The judge initially decided to close his 10th floor courtroom to the public, saying that the 4-year-old victim’s right to privacy trumped the public’s First Amendment right to an open courtroom.
     The Register objected to closing the courtroom, not that we wanted to view the videos, but more that we believe that public trials should be conducted in public.
     Carmichael then suggested a compromise,  in order to protect Sikat’s right to a public trial. She suggested that they bring in a new viewing screen that would be placed facing the jury, but facing away from the audience. That way, she said, spectators – and reporters — could come and go all they wanted  but would not be able to see the images on the screen.
      It is the same tactic used by Superior Court Judge Francisco Briseno when he banned public viewing if the infamous pool table sex video on the Haidl rape case, where three teenaged boys were convicted of having unlawful sex with a seemingly unconscious 16-year-old girl in a garage belonging to then Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl.
     Paer agreed to Carmichael’s plan, commenting thatit would rule out at least one potential ground for appeal should Sikat be convicted.

       Carmichael started showing one of the videotapes to jurors late this afternoon. Several of the jurors started crying while they watched.

       Hwang, 36, and Sikat, 26, were arrested in September 2004. The newlyweds offered to baby-sit a 4-year-old female relative, and then videotaped the molestations,according to sheriffs investigators.

–Larry Welborn

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