SANTA CRUZ — In a hearing packed with graphic descriptions of sexual abuse against four children, a Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge on Tuesday heard a litany of accusations against a former Santa Cruz neurosurgeon and his two female codefendants, all of whom are facing multiple charges and lifetimes in prison.
After hearing the evidence Tuesday and watching more than two hours of video footage of the alleged abuse on Wednesday, Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge John Salazar set an Oct. 24 date to make his ruling.
James Kohut, 58, Rashel Brandon, 44, and Emily Stephens, 31, were in court for their preliminary hearing, during which a judge decides whether there is enough evidence to hold a trial.
They face charges that they abused Stephens’ children, a 3-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl, and Brandon’s son, 9.
Prosecutors also say Kohut convinced a woman to travel to Santa Cruz from Louisiana, and bring her 13-year-old daughter for Kohut to abuse. The three stayed in the Chaminade Hotel, where Kohut touched the girl sexually.
Kohut also faces charges for attempting to entice a fourth woman to allow him to impregnate her and raise a child to be sexually abused.
In an unusual move, Salazar granted a request by the defendants’ attorneys to allow their clients not to be present in court for the hearing.
Kohut was noticeably thinner than in previous court appearances and with long, lanky hair. The women wore their hair long, which shielded their faces from the courtroom. The suspects said little except to briefly answer questions from Salazar.
During the four-hour hearing, Santa Cruz County Assistant District Attorney Steven Moore laid out the case against the defendants, calling four Watsonville Police officers, an FBI agent and an investigator from the district attorney’s office to testify.
According to prosecutors, Kohut wanted to create “taboo families,” for which he would impregnate women and raise the children “sexually.”
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Blackmail and a love triangle
According to Kelli Freitas, an inspector from the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office, Kohut and Stephens were in such a relationship for eight years. Three of her four children were sexually active with adults, Freitas said.
In addition, Stephens was pregnant with Kohut’s child, and was blackmailing him by threatening to expose the child and the relationship to Kohut’s wife, according to Watsonville Police Detective Juan Sanchez.
Kohut paid Stephens about $180,000 over a year.
In an attempt to counter that threat, Kohut convinced Brandon to make videos of Stephens sexually abusing children to have something with which to blackmail Stephens, prosecutors say.
The case against the three came to light when Brandon’s husband contacted the Watsonville Police Department, saying he found a video that depicted Brandon and Stephens sexually abusing three children, one of which was the couple’s 9-year-old son.
The other two were Stephen’s 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son, said Sanchez, who investigated the case.
In the course of that investigation, detectives found a cell phone belonging to Brandon, which contained a video depicting Brandon and Stephens sexually abusing Brandon’s 9-year-old son.
The case was later strengthened when Isaac Lynn, Brandon’s brother, found a GoPro camera while going through her belongings, which contained several videos depicting Kohut, Stephens and Brandon sexually abusing children.
Among other things, the videos depict the adults orally copulating the children and Stephens holding her daughter’s arms down while Kohut orally copulated her. The videos also show Kohut, Stephens and Brandon encouraging the children to perform sex acts on each other, prosecutors say.
