Dalliance With Banning Girl Costs 8 Month In Jail, Freedom For Accused

BANNING, CA — A 33-year-old Oregon man who traveled to Riverside County for a dalliance with a Banning girl was sentenced Tuesday to eight months behind bars, but after receiving credit for time served in a local correctional facility awaiting disposition of his case, he was immediately placed on parole.

Devon Richard Decerto of Gresham, Oregon, in May admitted a charge of contacting a minor to perpetrate a sexual offense. The admission was part of a plea agreement with the Riverside County District Attorney's Office, and in exchange, prosecutors dropped a related charge.

During a hearing Tuesday at the Banning Justice Center, Superior Court Judge Joshlyn Pulliam imposed the sentence stipulated by the prosecution and defense. Because Decerto had been held at the Smith Correctional Facility since his arrest in February, the eight-month prison term was invalidated.

However, Pulliam ordered that Decerto register as a convicted sex offender as part of his parole. Penal Code section 290 prohibits sex registrants from holding certain jobs to prevent contact with minors, limits where they can loiter and requires them to advise law enforcement of where they're living.

According to the Banning Police Department, on the afternoon of Feb. 14, the mother of the victim went to the police department to complain that her 16-year-old daughter had been regularly communicating with Decerto since the start of the year on social media, and had even met him in person that Valentine's Day after he flew from Oregon to Southern California.

Detectives discovered the defendant was still in the area and preparing to fly home via Ontario International Airport, at which point they obtained an arrest warrant and served it on him at the airport, before he boarded his flight to Portland.

Decerto was taken into custody without incident.

He had no documented prior felony convictions in California. Information on possible convictions in Oregon was unavailable.