Riverside County man sentenced to more than 50 years for abusing three children in his care
A Riverside County man was sentenced to more than five decades in prison last week for abusing three siblings who were in his care for years.
Mazen Aliwi Alawai, 50, of Riverside, was sentenced to 52 years and eight months behind bars after he was found guilty by a jury in February of 10 counts of forcible lewd acts on a child under 14, three counts each of child abuse and making criminal threats and one count each of assault with a deadly weapon and witness intimidation, prosecutors said in a news release from the Riverside County District Attorney's Office.
Between 2016 and 2019, prosecutors said that Alwai repeatedly abused the three siblings, two boys and a girl, at his home on Matthews Street and other locations in Los Angeles County. They said that only the girl was sexually molested, and that he beat or threatened the two boys. They said all three of the siblings were under 12 at the time.
"The defendant took away my childhood, my innocence and separated me from my mother," the female victim told the court during Wednesday's sentencing hearing.
Prosecutors said that the three children were brought to the U.S. "after feeling a war-torn country," which wasn't named, through an arrangement between Alawi and their mother.
"The victims' mother was left behind after Alawi promised to bring her to the U.S., but never did," the DA's Office release said. "Beginning the day they arrived, the defendant repeatedly sexually abused the one victim over the next three years while also physically abusing all three children."
The court papers show that one of the children was injured with a knife and that the defendant used violence and threats to maintain control. He would threaten to kill the children or send them back to a war zone while also punching, kicking or using household objects to beat them. Prosecutors also said that Alawi instructed the three children to lie to authorities.
Alawi was arrested in May 2019 after the abuse was reported to school staff, who alerted law enforcement.
"The future is not for me to decide. There is one thing I thank God for; He has given me an example of what not to be," said another of the victim's statements provided by the DA's Office. "I intend to be the exact opposite. I will aim only to improve the people around me, beginning with myself."
