Man Sentenced for Molesting Illegal Alien, 13

A man who admitted that he sexually abused a 13-year-old illegal immigrant after promising the boy a job and a place to live was sentenced Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court to three years in prison.

Dennis Gerald Schrader, 38, met the Mexican boy and his father at a video arcade in downtown Los Angeles last spring and offered the boy a live-in housekeeping job, according to a probation report. The father, Luis Mercado, and his son had been living downtown in a car, begging for food and selling oranges, since a back injury put an end to Mercado’s work as a farm laborer.

The boy lived with Schrader in a Wilshire District apartment for about a month before he complained to his father of the sexual abuse, the probation report said.

Schrader originally was charged with one count of forced oral copulation with a child under 14 and one count of sodomy, but pleaded guilty July 1 to a single charge of child molesting.

The case gained public attention in June after the boy’s mother, Maria Guadalupe Mercado, and her other children were detained as they tried to cross the border from Mexico to join the father and son. The family was later released by immigration authorities after an anonymous donor posted a $3,500 bond.