SANTA ANA, Calif.—A former co-owner of STARS Prep Academy was convicted July 30 of sexually assaulting a student and an employee.
Christopher Martin Flores was convicted of four counts of lewd acts on a child 14 or 15, among other charges, all felonies.
Flores, who was taken into custody after the verdicts, was scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 4.
Flores was co-owner, trainer and coach at the sports academy, which was a developmental league for youths. It had moved from Anaheim to the campus of Calvary Chapel High School in Santa Ana when a former soccer player at the school said she was first attacked in January 2021 when she was 14.
The now 17-year-old accuser, who lives in Irvine and will begin her senior year in high school this year, testified that she was in eighth grade when she first met “Coach Frogg,” as he was known.
The accuser’s stepfather knew of the school, which provided online classes and coaching, so he suggested it to the teen’s mother, she said. When she attended classes while the academy was in Anaheim she said she did not know the defendant, but then her mother reached out to Flores to mentor her, she said.
In one incident, Flores told her to “give him a hug, and he grabbed my butt and said this is our little secret,” she testified.
In April 2021, the teen’s mother could not pick her up right away after school so she went with Flores to an athletic center in Anaheim used for practice with several boys from the school, she said.
When the boys got out to go to practice, Flores told the girl to remain in the car because, “We’re going to get smoothies,” she said.
Flores drove to a smoothie shop, got the drinks and returned to the car with the teen waiting for him. He drove back to the gym, parked the car on the street, and molested her, she said.
Flores “told me not to tell anyone,” she testified.
She also recounted an afternoon when she was summoned to Flores’s office in what was known as the K-Wave Building across the street. Flores had picked up lunch as he frequently did from McDonald’s for the athletes and when the girl arrived in his office he had her start eating, she said.
Then, the accuser testified, Flores started kissing her.
She also accused him of picking her up once during winter break in December 2021 when she had left the academy and was a freshman in high school and drove down an alley where he parked the car and began kissing her, she said.
Also, after she had graduated from the academy and was in high school, he called her trying to get her to go on a date with him, she testified. She recorded the two-minute call, which was played for jurors.
“He was trying to get me to hang out with him,” she said.
She also accused Flores of asking her if she “deleted everything,” referring to text messages between the two.
The accuser said she told her boyfriend when she was a freshman in high school as well as two other friends. She said she asked them not to tell anyone because she did not want Flores to get into trouble because she wanted to have a future playing soccer and Flores had “a lot of connections.”
During the summer of 2022 when she was preparing to enter her sophomore year of high school, the police came calling with questions, she said. When her mother asked her if Flores had touched her she initially denied it but then started crying and said he did touch her, she said.
When the news broke of Flores’s arrest, his former business partner, ex-NFL cornerback Jason David, posted a video on social media saying the academy had cut ties with the defendant and that he was “disgusted” by the allegations.
Flores was also accused of hugging another girl at the school from behind and asking her sexually charged questions, and asking inappropriate questions of one of her friends, another student. Flores was not charged with that conduct but the evidence was used to show a pattern of behavior for jurors to consider.
Flores was also convicted of sexually assaulting a 22-year-old woman who worked at the school during a party at Flores’s home in Bellflower in January 2021.
The defendant’s attorney, Ed Welbourn, said his client was not guilty of any of the accusations. Many parents at the school looked to Flores to mentor their children, Welbourn said.
Welbourn said the students were not allowed in the K-Wave building, casting doubt on the accuser’s story of a groping in his office.
Welbourn also cast doubt on the timing alleged in the charges and said the accuser was in a “different county and city” when she said the sex assaults occurred.
“This case is going to boil down to three teenage girls who started a story and built on it,” Welbourn said.
He also pointed to a text message in which one of the accusers said she wanted to “clear” Flores’s name.
Flores was acquitted of rape, kidnapping, and sodomy in Pasadena in 2009, but jurors did not hear that evidence in this trial.
