A Cook County jury took only an hour Tuesday to convict a Cicero man of sexually assaulting two 13-year-old girls in a Burbank park in 2012.
Fernando Gonzalez, 38, did not testify in his defense during his two-day trial at the Cook County courthouse in Bridgeview.
The jury found the registered sex offender guilty on two counts of criminal sexual assault and four counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse. His sentencing was set for Sept. 8.
Circuit Court Judge Colleen Hyland revoked Gonzalez’s $1 million bail on Wednesday. He has remained at the Cook County Jail since his arrest in January 2013.
Testimony from the two victims indicated that Gonzalez approached them twice on Aug. 3, 2012, telling them they could be models and eventually luring them one at a time to be photographed in his black sport utility vehicle at Owens Park, 78th Street and LeClaire Avenue.
The girls, now 16, told jurors that Gonzalez took photos of them in suggestive poses on his camera phone and fondled each inside the SUV.
“He knew exactly what to say” to get the teens to go along, Vincenzo Chimera, deputy division chief with the Illinois Attorney General’s Office, told the jury Tuesday during his closing arguments.
The attorney’s general office prosecuted the case because of a conflict of interest involving Gonzalez’s wife and the state’s attorney’s office.
The defense, which did not present any evidence, argued that Gonzalez never touched the girls, who took money for the pictures, and claimed that the victims gave conflicting testimony this week about what had happened.
Gonzalez’s family sat motionless in the courtroom Wednesday as the verdict in each of the six counts was read.
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Gonzalez is listed on Illinois’ sex offender website for a conviction in an April 2000 incident involving a woman who was 18 at the time. That woman testified Wednesday that she skipped school one day and had shoplifted at a Riverside grocery store when she was approached by Gonzalez, whom the prosecution said was a security guard at the store.
She said Gonzalez led her to his van, where he fondled her and masturbated in front of her before letting her go.