In an emotionally-charged sentencing Wednesday, a former California Highway Patrol sergeant was ordered by a judge to serve 300 days in the Placer County Jail for child molestation incidents involving two girls.
Wayne Robert Alger, 37, of Roseville was also ordered to register as a sex offender for life and he was placed on five years of formal probation by Placer County Superior Court Judge J. Richard Couzens.
Alger entered a guilty plea in August to two misdemeanor counts of child molestation and to one misdemeanor count of possessing child pornography. He resigned from the CHP shortly after his arrest last year.
Prosecutor Jeff Wood of the Placer County District Attorney’s Office said after the sentencing that the molestation incidents consisted of inappropriate touching while Alger was off duty as a CHP officer.
The incidents included Alger kissing a 16-year-old girl and trying to undo her bra in 2008 and the rubbing of his hand on the thigh of a 12-year-old girl in 2007.
Alger, a 10-year veteran of the CHP, was arrested Oct. 24, 2008, by Rocklin police following an investigation into a report by the family of one of the victims.
Before Couzens pronounced the sentence Wednesday, the families of the two girls verbally blasted the defendant in court for violating the trust they placed in him and for betraying the oath he took to protect the public as a law enforcement officer.
‘You are a disgrace as a man and as a CHP officer,’ the mother of the older girl shouted at him. ‘I hope you burn in hell.’
The older girl, who is now 17, did not attend the sentencing. But the younger girl, now 15, was in the audience with her parents. A video-recorded statement made by her was played on a large screen in court.
The girl said Alger’s advances toward her when she was 12 confused her and eventually left her hurt and betrayed. She said she trusted no one.
‘I was always so angry at the world,’ she said. ‘I took it out on my friends and I lost them because of my rudeness. I could not focus. I felt like a failure and I was suicidal.’
The girl said she continues to have nightmares about Alger.
‘You deserve to rot in jail for everything you have done to me and my family,’ she told Alger through the DVD recording.
The girl’s mother called Alger a ‘monster’ and a ‘textbook predator’ who befriended the family to gain access to her daughter.
The girl’s father, who is also a CHP officer and was one of Alger’s best friends, said the defendant’s actions have caused his family to spend ‘hundreds of hours’ in counseling. He called Alger an embarrassment to law enforcement.
‘Instead of protecting the public from evil, he committed evil himself,’ he said.
Alger did not make a statement to the court. His attorney, Greg Elvine-Kreis, said his client has accepted responsibility for his crimes but that he is not a predator.
Saying Alger is remorseful and amenable to counseling and treatment, the attorney urged Couzens to sentence his client to not more than 90 days in jail.
However, Couzens said he had to take into account that Alger, as a law enforcement officer, had position and trust in the community.
That trust was ‘totally obliterated,’ the judge said.