Gang-Rape Defendant Haidl Faces New Sex Allegation

Gregory Haidl, the son of a high-ranking Orange County sheriff’s official and who is awaiting retrial on gang-rape charges, was arrested Thursday on a misdemeanor allegation of having sex with an underage girl.

Haidl, 19, was taken into custody about 5:20 p.m. while driving with his mother near the Street of the Golden Lantern and Pacific Coast Highway in Dana Point, officials said.

Haidl, son of Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl, was booked into Orange County Jail and bail was set at $100,000, said Lt. Hayward Miller, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department. He was released later in the evening. Both the arrest and bail, he said, are standard in sex-crime cases, including those involving alleged misdemeanors such as this.

The accusation stemmed from an investigation that began early Wednesday, when deputies were summoned to a house in San Clemente by neighbors complaining about a barking dog and loud noise.

Authorities said they found three teenage girls in the house and Haidl hiding in the backyard with a teenage boy. Subsequent questioning of the girls, another sheriff’s spokesman said, revealed that Haidl may have had sex with one who is 16.

“The sex crimes unit ... put together their package and sent it to the [district attorney’s office], which, in turn, issued a warrant for Mr. Haidl’s arrest,” Miller said.

At the time of his arrest, Haidl was free on another $100,000 bail while awaiting retrial, expected to begin next month, on charges that he and two friends gang-raped a then-16-year-old girl two years ago at his father’s Corona del Mar home. The first jury deadlocked in June. Prosecutors announced the next day that the charges would be refiled.