Former youth soccer coach accepts plea deal

A former Santa Rosa youth soccer coach agreed to admit one count of sexual acts with a teenage girl on Monday, minutes before the girl was set to testify about the details of the encounter at a preliminary hearing.

With the plea deal, Richard A. Vives, 42, will be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. Prosecutors agreed to dismiss the other seven charges against him at the sentencing hearing in January.

Vives, former junior varsity soccer coach at Piner High School and a long-time referee in both club and school programs, pleaded no contest, the legal equivalent of guilty, to one felony count of oral copulation on a 16-year-old girl who was too intoxicated to resist.

The charge carries a maximum sentence of eight years in prison, prosecutor Jason Riehl said. Vives, who has no prior criminal record, could also receive probation and counseling or jail time.

The incident was not related to his coaching or referee activities. It occurred in early October at his home when the teen girl was sleeping over and the two of them were the only ones awake in the house, said Vives’ attorney, Kristine Burk. Both Vives and the girl, a friend of one of Vives’ daughters, had consumed alcohol, she said.

There was no coercion, force or violence involved and the girl’s level of intoxication was questionable, she said.

Vives felt it was important to accept responsibility rather than drag his family and the girl through a humiliating public process, Burk said.

“Good people make mistakes,” she said. “I don’t think he actually is guilty of this specific offense, but this is the kind of thing where you could win the battle and lose the war.”

The girl and her family, through Riehl, declined to comment.

Vives will be examined by a court-appointed psychiatrist, whose conclusions will be included in a Probation Department recommendation to Judge Elliot Daum on an appropriate punishment. The sentencing hearing was scheduled for Jan. 23.