John Jefferson
From top left clockwise: A Safeway in San Francisco, Calif. September 13, 2018. (Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle via AP). Stephen Masalta (Larimer County Jail). Google Maps image of Safeway in Colorado where Masalta once worked and is accused of exposing himself.
A Colorado judge sentenced a 33-year-old man to three years in prison for masturbating outside of coffee shops and ejaculating onto “unsealed” foods in the bakery at the grocery store where he worked.
Stephen Masalta pleaded guilty in September to attempted sexual assault on a child and two counts of indecent exposure, the Larimer County District Attorney’s Office announced Friday. Masalta will be credited for about a year behind bars, meaning he’ll be back out on the streets in two years. Once he’s released, he will be required to register as a sex offender, have no contact under the age of 18 and is not allowed to have unsupervised internet access.
Police and prosecutors lamented they couldn’t issue a harsher punishment for Masalta, who was caught masturbating outside coffee shops in Fort Collins to the horror of many, including children, in February. Subsequent investigation led authorities to discover Masalta’s “depraved” actions at the Safeway grocery store where he worked.
“I understand that this sentencing may not align with public expectation, and I share the view that this man’s actions were unimaginable. Unfortunately, things don’t always unfold the way we hope,” said Assistant Chief Kristy Volesky, who oversees the Criminal Investigation Division at Fort Collins Police Services.
District Attorney Gordon McLaughlin said prosecutors had to work “creatively” to impose a harsh punishment because the law does not allow for multiple misdemeanor charges to run consecutively. Masalta was originally charged with 14 misdemeanor counts of indecent exposure, two counts of attempted indecent exposure, also a misdemeanor, four counts of misdemeanor attempted unlawful sexual contact and 16 counts of attempted sexual assault on a child.
McLaughlin said the plea deal required Masalta to serve the maximum on the felony charge.
“The depravity of Mr. Masalta’s actions cannot be understated. His actions were shocking and left a considerable mark on our community,” he said. “Simply put, his actions were so horrific that our current law has not contemplated it, and I hope that we can work with the legislature to ensure crimes like this will be fully covered by the law in the future.”
As Law&Crime previously reported, Fort Collins police said in a statement that they began investigating reports of indecent exposure by a person showing up at local coffee shops to “perform obscene behavior” around or in front of employees, some of them minors.
Fort Collins Police Chief Jeff Swoboda explained in an update to the case against Masalta that since his arrest in February and after a search warrant was executed on his home, investigators found videos in the property of Masalta masturbating and ejaculating on food at Safeway at 1426 East Harmony Road.
“As we went through the evidence we realized there had been many more crimes, and many more victims in our community,” Swoboda said.
Masalta worked there for two months and he “ejaculated and masturbated on multiple items of food and items of food that were not commercially sealed.”
“After an intensive investigation, detectives were able to locate and notify all impacted victims in this case,” prosecutors said.
Brandi Buchman contributed to this report
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