Parole board denies plea

George England, a convicted repeat child molester from Costa Mesa, has lost his bid for parole from Salinas Valley State Prison. The 65-year-old appeared Monday before the prison’s parole board, which ruled against granting him early release.

England’s prison sentence tentatively is set to expire in March, said Susan Schroeder, spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney’s office, which is trying to keep England locked up. Prosecutors will file a petition under the Sexually Violent Predator law to keep the inmate in a mental institution once his sentence is completed, officials said.

At Monday’s parole board hearing, England continued to deny that he molested three girls in the 1970s, Schroeder said. She added that he plans to live in Canada upon his release from prison.

“He has zero remorse,” Schroeder said. “He has taken absolutely no therapy and denies that he needs it.”

England was convicted of molesting three girls in his Costa Mesa mobile home. He had met the girls through his “daughter,” a 5-year-old he purchased from her mother in Vietnam in 1972. When the two settled in Costa Mesa, he used the daughter as bait for more victims, prosecutors allege. One of the girls he molested told her mother that she was afraid that England would attack her little sister, too. His daughter didn’t come forward as a victim until nearly 30 years later. By then the statute of limitations on the crimes had passed, prosecutors said.

When England was convicted of the three molestations in 1977, he fled to Santa Barbara County with his daughter and took on the identity of a deceased 11-month-old boy from decades earlier. From there, prosecutors said he moved to Florida, where he was eventually arrested and convicted of federal crimes related to the boy’s stolen identity. After serving time for those crimes, he was finally sentenced in 2006 for the 1977 conviction.

He was given three years to life in prison.

England was convicted under child molestation laws dating to the 1970s. Had he been convicted of the same crimes today, he would have faced 45 years to life in prison, according to the district attorney’s office.