OC dance teacher guilty of molesting student

SANTA ANA, Calif. Jason Alan Marian, 31, Mission Viejo, was found guilty by a jury of five felony counts. He faces a maximum sentence of nine years in state prison. In April 2007, Marian and his wife were both dance instructors at Mission Viejo Dance and Performing Arts Center. On April 14, 2007, prosecutors say he invited several female dance students, between the ages of 12 and 14 years, to his home for a party.

After playing in a nearby park, prosecutors say Marian and the girls come back to his house for a barbecue and swimming, where Marian had set up a camera in the bathroom of his house to record the girls as they undressed.

One of the victims noticed the camera while changing and removed it from the bathroom. She gave it to her parents, who turned it over to the Orange County Sheriff's Department. During a subsequent investigation, officers learned of an unlawful sexual relationship between the defendant and a 16-year-old victim.

Between December 2005 and June 2006, the investigators say Marian offered to help a 16-year-old girl with a science project. The teenager was a student at Mission Viejo Dance and Performing Arts Center but was not a student of the defendant. Investigators say Marian offered to assist her with the school science project by taking her to his other job at the Ocean Institute in Dana Point.

Prosecutors say Marian then invited the victim to the beach, gave her alcohol, took provocative photographs of her in her bathing suit and sexually assaulted her in June, 2006.

Marian is scheduled to be sentenced on July 16, 2010.

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