A former boys’ choir vocal coach who fled to England to avoid child molestation charges in 2007, setting off a years-long battle in British courts over his extradition back to the United States, agreed to a plea deal on Tuesday morning in Orange County Superior Court and was immediately sentenced to 24 years in prison.
Roger Alan Giese, 49, admitted to 20 felony charges — including lewd acts upon a child and sexual penetration by a foreign object — against two young teens in the late 1990s. He met at least one of the boys through the All-American Boys Chorus, where Giese, at the time an Irvine resident, was a vocal coach and the victim was a choirboy.
In a Santa Ana courtroom on Tuesday, one of the now-adult victims struggled with emotions as he read a written statement to Judge Lewis W. Clapp, eventually asking a supporter to take over for him. In the statement, the man described how the allegations “tore apart” the community surrounding the choir and led him to lose friends.
“He was a master of his craft, all of us kids in the chorus were his victims,” the man wrote in his statement. “Until I know he is put away for good I won’t be able to close this over-extended chapter in my life.”
The mother of one of the victims, in a statement read by a prosecutor, wrote that Giese had “gotten away with not being accountable for his crimes for far too long…
“I believe he is capable of manipulating people into almost anything by making them think it is for a good cause,” the mother wrote.
Beyond confirming that he understood the details of his plea agreement, Giese did not speak during the change of plea and sentencing hearing.
In September 2002, the family of the first victim contacted police, describing how Giese had “befriended” them through church and told the then-13-year-old that he was involved in an elite military unit and that he could get the boy into the unit if he was willing to supply various “bodily fluids.”
Giese was arrested and charged with multiple felony counts. But as his trial was about to begin, Giese disappeared.
DA investigators would later learn that Giese had taken a flight from Charlotte, North Carolina to the Cayman Islands.
Giese was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted list. But he wouldn’t be located for another six years, after his inclusion on an episode of America’s Most Wanted” led to a tip that Giese was in England.
Giese, under an assumed name, was working for a public relations firm and had taken up residence in a Hampshire village, where even a woman he was living with didn’t know his true identity.
Extradition efforts dragged on for years, as local prosecutors faced numerous legal hurdles in British courts.
The authorities overseas were concerned that, following a prison term, Orange County prosecutors would seek to have Giese committed to a state mental health facility indefinitely as a sexually violent predator.
Such a move, UK officials believed, would be a human rights violation.
Orange County authorities ultimately assured their British counterparts that Giese’s alleged crimes did not qualify him for a sexually violent predator designation and a civil sex offender commitment.
In 2018, Giese was extradited back to the United States. Four years later, prosecutors added the sexual assault allegations involving the second boy.
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