Prop. 69 DNA Rule Leads to O.C. Rape Charges

An Orange County Superior Court commissioner set bail at $1 million Friday for a 22-year-old man charged with kidnapping and raping a 14-year-old girl in 2000 after a statewide DNA database linked him to the unsolved case, prosecutors said Friday.

Mustafa Tarin of Irvine is one of the first people in Orange County to be charged as a result of Proposition 69.

The initiative, passed in November 2004, mandates that DNA samples be collected from adults and minors convicted of felonies, as well as adults arrested on suspicion of murder or certain sex offenses.

Prosecutors say that when the alleged victim was visiting friends at a Garden Grove motel on Christmas evening in 2000, Tarin, who was 17 at the time, and another person lured her into their car by offering her a ride home. Prosecutors said she was kidnapped and taken to a deserted Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley where they raped and sodomized her.

Authorities collected Tarin’s DNA after his arrest for felony drug trafficking in 2005 -- he pleaded guilty -- and compared it with evidence gathered in the 2000 investigation.

On Friday, Commissioner Clarence E. Haynes postponed Tarin’s arraignment to Wednesday. Prosecutors said he would be tried as an adult.

“Without Prop. 69, this case would not have been solved or would’ve taken a lot longer,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Susan Kang Schroeder. “There was no mechanism for us to collect DNA from this guy. We didn’t even suspect him.”