Gascon Acknowledges Sentence Not Adequate For Convicted Child Sex Abuser Hannah Tubbs

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) – Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón admitted Sunday that a two-year sentence in juvenile custody for a transgender woman accused of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl in a restaurant bathroom was likely not adequate.

Last month, 26-year-old Hannah Tubbs was sentenced to two years in a juvenile facility after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl in a Palmdale restaurant bathroom back in 2014, when Tubbs was 17.

In a statement Sunday, Gascón said that he became aware after Tubbs' sentencing following "extremely troubling statements she made about her case, the resolution of it and the young girl that she harmed."

Gascón's statement comes after Fox News allegedly obtained jailhouse recordings of Tubbs boasting about avoiding serious prison time.

"I'm gonna plead out to it, plead guilty," Tubbs allegedly told her father in a phone conversation. "They're gonna stick me on probation, and it's gonna be dropped, it's gonna be done, I won't have to register, won't have to do nothing."

Tubbs' victim released a statement that addressed the inadequate sentence, which stated in part: "Not only do I have to live with that awful memory for the rest of my life, but I'm also given no true justice as to what happened to me."

"While for most people, several years of jail time is adequate, it may not be for Ms. Tubbs," Gascón said in his statement.

In a press conference for an unrelated topic Tuesday, the district attorney was inundated by questions on Tubbs' prosecution, to which he responded: "If I had to do it all over again, this case would be prosecuted as an adult. ... I came to the conclusion this person was gaming the system."

Gascón claimed that he was made aware of the phone call's contents on Thursday, Feb. 17. "The contents of that call were extremely disturbing to me," he said. "It showed a level of callousness and a level of disrespect to humanity."

This claim comes despite reports that his office was aware of the phone call at least a month prior, when the prosecutor requested permission to present the tape at the sentencing, according to Steve Cooley, a co-chair in the Gascón recall effort. Cooley formerly served as the 41st District Attorney for Los Angeles County, serving three terms in the position from 2000 to 2012.

"He's absolutely insincere," Cooley said while discussing the subject with CBS' Jeff Nguyen. "He's lying to the public. He's desperate."

Tubbs' case was handled in juvenile court as a result of a directive Gascón issued the day he was sworn into office.

However, Gascón on Friday backed away from two of his most criticized directives, including one that eliminated the option of trying juveniles as adults for serious crimes.

Gascón noted in his statement on Sunday that Tubbs was arrested years after the crime "rather than the usual case, where a child is arrested close in time to their crime" and that Tubbs had "several charges in other counties after the juvenile offense but never received any services, which both her past behavior and that subsequent to her arrest demonstrates she clearly needs."

"If we knew about her disregard for the harm she caused, we would have handled this case differently," Gascón wrote. "The complex issues and facts of her particular case were unusual and I should have treated them that way. This change in policy will allow us the space to do that moving forward."

Gascón had vowed in his December 2020 directive that the DA's office would "immediately end the practice of sending youths to the adult court system."

But he abruptly changed his position on that with a series of memos Friday to office staff, including one in which he noted that "in exceptional circumstances, criminal jurisdiction may be appropriate for youth offenders" and that juveniles may be selectively transferred to the adult court system in the "most egregious cases that warrant a state prison commitment."

L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger called the outcome of Tubbs' case "unsatisfactory," saying in a Jan. 27 statement that the judge's hands were "tied...due to the fact that the DA's office failed to file a motion to transfer Tubbs to adult criminal court, which is where she rightly belongs."

The day he was sworn in, Gascón issued a directive mandating that special-circumstance allegations resulting in a sentence of life without parole shall not be filed and should be withdrawn from pending cases on which they had already been filed. He was met with quick resistance, with the association representing more than 800 deputy DAs in L.A. County filing a lawsuit in December 2020 challenging some of Gascón's directives, including the requirement that prosecutors seek the dismissal of special-circumstance allegations in murder cases that were pending. The association contended that the moves were "unlawful," and a number of judges refused to dismiss the allegations in cases that had been filed before Gascón took office.

Gascón is facing a renewed recall effort that was announced in December. Recall supporters are working to collect 566,857 signatures from registered voters for submission to the county registrar's office by July 6. A similar effort in 2021 failed to gather enough signatures to qualify.

On Tuesday, members of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys overwhelmingly voted to support the recall effort for Gascón.

(© Copyright 2022 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)