A jury convicted a Gary man Thursday evening of molesting two preteen girls.
Joshua Hansen, 32, of Gary, was convicted of all 21 felonies he faced after a four-day trial, including three counts of Level 1 felony child molesting. He is facing decades behind bars.
Jurors deliberated for about four hours. His sentencing hearing is May 24 before Judge Salvador Vasquez.
Hansen testified for about two hours Thursday where he categorically denied the victims’ accusations. During the testimony, his lawyer Marc Laterzo asked Hansen if he fondled one victim, or in another incident, had the other child perform a sex act.
“Absolutely, it did not happen,” he responded.
He denied several other incidents from years later on the stand, including inappropriate behavior the victims later disclosed to a relative, who told their mother. The woman called Hansen “hysterical,” he said.
“I explained to her what happened,” he said.
On a lengthy cross-examination, Deputy Prosecutor Tara Villarreal asked Hansen if the victims were lying. Court records showed their accounts were backed up by DNA evidence.
The jury didn’t ask him any follow-up questions.
In closing arguments, she said Hansen was a “master manipulator and molester.”
Laterzo said the case was “extremely difficult.” He argued prosecutors hadn’t met their burden of proof. The accusations started when the children were 4 or 5, resumed years later in summer 2022, then over Christmas break 2022 at Hansen’s Calumet Township trailer.
“Child molesters (don’t) take breaks,” he said.
The two victims told police that they were first molested by Hansen years earlier around ages 4 or 5. Hansen began molesting them again “several” times in the summer of 2022 and again around Christmas, according to a criminal affidavit, when — among several other accusations — he allegedly tried to have sex with one child.
“Come on, you’re gonna make me cry, you know I haven’t had it since my girlfriend left me,” he said.
He showed the children pornography, according to the affidavit.
When police executed a search warrant at his trailer on the 4700 block of Marshall Court in Gary, they found sex toys and paraphernalia, and pornography web searches. They removed a tablet for evidence.
They also found child pornography on his cellphone. In total, it had 46,000 pornographic web searches or URLs, according to the affidavit.
DNA evidence appeared to corroborate the children’s accounts, according to the affidavit.
Prosecutors played the victims’ forensic interviews Wednesday.
The victims’ mother testified Tuesday she confronted Hansen years earlier when one child asked if a sex act was normal. Hansen claimed the child must have seen adults by mistake.
The woman said after the girls confided in a relative in the incidents years later, she called Hansen, then called the police that night.
“I couldn’t really believe it,” she said, adding she was “shocked.”
Later, while she was at the Lake County Special Victims Unit, he called her from jail.
“I’m gonna be gone for a really long time if we don’t figure this out,” he told her, according to charging documents.
He had “no idea what (he) did to them,” she recounted in court. The allegations would impact his life, he said.
“You did this to yourself,” she responded.
