commentary by Patrick H. Moore
“Why would you let a 9-year-old who you hardly know, put their feet on your face?” This very logical question was put to Julian Christopher Flores, a 19-year- old former roller rink employee at Northridge Skateland in the San Fernando Valley, by a boy who Mr. Flores had lured into the maintenance room for the express purpose of achieving tumescence of his erectile tissue through engaging in his foot fetish, which consisted of Flores having the boys remove their socks prior to rubbing their feet on his face and hands.
Like most modern men, Flores insisted on videotaping some of his peculiar sexual encounters and is believed to have stored the videos on his cellphone and laptop. In the videos, he is seen instructing several “unknown minors” to remove their socks.
At present, even though cited court documents state that Flores admitted to taking up to 200 young boys into the Skateland maintenance room over the course of a year to presumably satiate his lust, he is charged with only one count of false imprisonment and one count of attempting a lewd act on a child, according to the Los Angeles Times. The limited number of charges at present is based on the fact that only one child victim has come forward. At his initial court appearance, Flores pleaded not guilty.
Unless the police can somehow identify the 199 other alleged victims, they will be stymied in doing what they seem to love the most – racking up literally hundreds of felony counts.
Although it is undoubtedly strange, Flores’ version of sexual molestation is arguably less serious than what normally occurs during non-consensual sex between an adult and a child. In fact, it may not technically constitute pedophilia even though at least some (and probably most) of the boys were under the age of 12.
There appears to have been a certain method to Flores’ madness. If out of 200 victims, only one has come forward, that suggests that many of the other 199 boys probably didn’t take their encounters that seriously. It’s easy to imagine fellow victims getting together and their telling war stories without viewing it as a hanging matter, particularly since the perpetrator was a teenager.
“It was originally reported by the family that this individual had asked their son to remove his socks and put his feet on the suspect’s face. Obviously, that was a concern. They investigated it,” said Cmdr. Andy Smith with the Los Angeles Police Department.
According to a search warrant obtained by Eyewitness News, Flores convinced the boy to follow him to a maintenance room by employing the old “I bet you can’t…” which in this case was “I bet you can’t take off your socks without your hands.”
The boy’s grandmother was at the rink with her 9-year-old grandson and when he didn’t come back from the restroom, she started to call out his name. Hearing her voice, Flores got nervous and allegedly turned off the maintenance room lights and told the child to be quiet. His escape plan was to exit the maintenance room first followed by the boy a minute or two later.
The grandmother waited for the boy in the hallway next to the bathroom. Shortly after she saw Flores coming out into the hallway, she saw her grandson walk out without his skates on. When she questioned the boy, he told her what had happened.
According to the search warrant, Flores admitted to the victim’s allegations when interviewed by LAPD the following day. Flores allegedly “admitted to having a foot fetish and that he is sexually aroused by his fetish.” He allegedly reported that he was going to “play with [the] victim’s feet” except the boy’s grandmother interrupted them.
After interviewing Flores and apparently eliciting his confession, law enforcement seized his cellphone and laptop which is where they found the videos in which he instructed the “unknown minors” to take off their socks.
The LA Times reports that investigators have served a search warrant on Northridge Skateland in the effort to identify victims who were patrons of the rink between May 1 and Dec. 21 of last year.
Northridge Skateland is a family-run business. Owner David Fleming reports that he handed over surveillance video of Flores to the investigators. Flores had worked at Skateland for two and a half years.
“There just wasn’t anything there that would indicate to us that he would ever do anything like that,” Fleming told Eyewitness News, adding that Flores was immediately terminated upon his arrest.
Fleming is a master of the cliche. He stated, “We’re just happy to see that we can move on now and just assure everybody that Skateland is still a very, very safe place to be.”
Fleming also insisted that this was an isolated incident.
“My brother Michael and I are former 9-year LAPD Reserve Officers so security and safety is a high priority. We are surprised and outraged that for the first time in the history of our rink one of our employees was being inappropriate with a customer by touching his feet. With close to 10,000 quality part-time employees having worked at Skateland since 1958, this one employee situation is an isolated incident. We have received just the one complaint which resulted in the arrest.”
Fleming appears to be overlooking the other 199 victims but what the heck, nobody’s perfect…
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Flores is little more than a kid himself. In his photographs, he appears to be a not unpleasant-looking young man who does not appear threatening.
Based on the present counts, he is facing a maximum sentence of 8 years and 4 months.