SANTA ANA (CNS) - A former boys' choir vocal coach accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old boy and fleeing the country before his trial could begin more than a decade ago was behind bars in Orange County today.
Roger Alan Giese was captured in England in March 2015 and spent three years fighting extradition. He was booked into Orange County Jail on Friday and was being held on $60 million bail. He is expected to appear in court in Santa Ana sometime Monday.
Giese, 43, met the alleged victim, who was 13 at the time, in his capacity as a vocal coach for the All-American Boys Chorus in Buena Park in 1998, according to the FBI. When he failed to show up for his trial, a judge issued an arrest warrant on March 12, 2007.
"Giese convinced the boy's parents to allow him to stay at their home for two weeks while he looked for a new apartment,” according to the warrant. ``During this two weeks he shared a bedroom with the minor, and he developed a sexual relationship with the boy. These activities continued until 1999. In 2002, the victim revealed what had happened to him, and Giese was arrested and charged.”
Giese was charged with five counts of lewd acts with a child, 10 counts of lewd acts with a child 14 to 15, three counts of sexual penetration by a foreign object of a minor and one count of oral copulation of a minor.
But he disappeared before his trial could begin.
An Orange County district attorney's investigator contacted the Department of Homeland Security on March 13, 2007, when records showed Giese had caught a flight two days earlier from Charlotte, North Carolina, to the Cayman Islands, according to the FBI warrant.
Giese was found three years ago in Hampshire, working for a PR firm and living under a different name with a woman who did not know his true identity.
Giese's challenge of his extradition failed in June in Britain's high court, the BBC reported, and in July, the court refused to let him appeal the decision.
Photo: Orange County DA’s Office.