David Jon Thomas booking photo
SALINAS — David Jon Thomas of Prunedale is set to spend the next 100 years in prison after being found guilty of multiple counts of sexual abuse.
The investigation began back in March of 2014, after Thomas’s 4-year-old daughter came home from a visit with him and told her mother (Thomas’s ex-wife at that point) that he’d made her touch his genitals.
The child’s mother turned the information over to authorities at the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office, who immediately scheduled an interview with the child at the Bates Eldridge Clinic at Natividad Medical Center. This particular interview technique was used so as to be non-leading. In this method, the child is allowed to disclose information at her own free will with no bias toward any particular individual.
Two years later, in August 2016, Thomas’s 10-year-old stepson also came forward to report multiple acts of sexual abuse at at the hands of his stepfather. In an interview with police, he said Thomas would send his mother away on shopping errands and the incidents would occur while she was out. He claimed Thomas was also verbally and physically abusive, so much so that he was afraid to come forward until after he was safely out of Thomas’s influence.
Thomas was found guilty in a Monterey County Court of sodomy on a child under 10 years of age and four counts of lewd acts on a child.
