Former Santa Ana school bus operator gets 95 years to life in prison for assaulting two little girls

Nery Rodriguez Gonzalez, a former school bus driver in Orange County was sentenced Wednesday to 95 years to life in prison for s*xually assaulting two young girls he lived with according to court records.

Gonzalez, 43, was convicted back on Sept. 18 of felony charges including one count of continuous s*xual abuse of a child and single counts each of lewd or lascivious acts with a minor younger than 14, aggravated s*xual assault of a child younger than 14, aggravated s*xual assault of a child with a foreign object and lewd or lascivious acts with a minor.

Gonzalez began to abuse the little girls when they were about 6 and 8 years old.

Gonzalez worked in Santa Ana for Durham School Services which served the Santa Ana Unified School District. There is no evidence the he ever abused any SAUSD students.

Two juvenile victims reported that Rodriguez sexually molested them when they were about eight-years-old and living in Santa Ana. Rodriguez repeatedly sexually abused the victims for several years and the abuse was never reported.

One of his victims recalled waking up while spending the night at his home with three siblings, to seeing Gonzalez having his way with another victim, according to the police testimony.

Police were called to Children’s Hospital in Orange County on Dec. 30, 2020, when one of the victims told her mother that Gonzalez had s*xually abused her since she was 8 until she was 13, according to police testimony at a preliminary hearing. The abuse happened in both Santa Ana and Garden Grove, according to the police.

On December 31, 2020, SAPD police officers arrested Gonzalez as he was located in the 700 block of south Lyon Street in Santa Ana. He was then booked at the Orange County Jail.