Law&Crime Sidebar - Florida Woman Had Sex with Teen She Met at Funeral: Cops

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

Ayla Gonzalez Salinas, 20, is facing multiple charges of lewd or lascivious battery for allegedly having sexual contact with a boy who is sixteen or younger. Florida authorities say she met the teen at a funeral in October 2024. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber dug into the disturbing details of the case with former prosecutor Melba Pearson.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Check out https://americanfinancing.net/sidebar or call 866-891-2821 to learn how homeowners are saving $800 a month on average. NMLS 182334, www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. This is not a headline you're sure to see every day. An adult woman meets an underage boy at a funeral and that leads to her allegedly sexually abusing him. Yeah, that's what authorities in Florida are saying about this 20-year-old suspect. Time to discuss. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Funerals, they're incredibly sad, they're reflective, those emotional times. These are those events when you remember the person you lost, usually sharing that moment with loved ones. It's a very somber time. You know what, funerals are not.

They're really not a place to meet a romantic interest. This isn't. wedding crashers. And you know what they really aren't? They are in a place for an adult to meet a minor to then sexually abuse them. Yeah. That's the allegations out of Florida that we got to talk about right now. 20-year-old Ila Gonzalez Salinas has been hit with charges, seven counts of lewd or lascivious battery of a victim for allegedly sexually abusing an underage boy that she apparently met at a funeral last year, November 2024. Now, we don't exactly know the circumstances about how she met this boy or allegedly met this boy at this funeral. We also don't know the exact age of this boy, although, I should tell you, the charges that she's facing, based on

the reporting, seemed to indicate a victim range of 12 to 16 years old. Now, she has been released on bond after being arrested by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office deputies. And as you can imagine, are a lot of things to talk about with this. So let me bring in civil rights and criminal law attorney, former prosecutor, Melba Pearson, who I haven't seen in quite some time, but always happy to see Melba, no matter what the topic is. Melba, good to see you. Great to see you, Jesse. Miss you.

I missed you too. Now, you know, I thought what was the case that we need to bring you back on? Ah, yes, the allegations here that this woman met an underage boy at a funeral and then proceeded to allegedly sexually abuse him. How does that even happen? I mean, meeting somebody at a funeral like this, I don't know the circumstances of it, but quite the headline. Yeah, and clearly that speaks to her being a predator,

because no one in their right mind is, first of all, going to be at a funeral grieving and be like, ooh, yeah, that person looks cute. So normally that's just a regular human being wouldn't react that way. But then secondly, to look at a child, because let's make no mistake, anyone between the ages of 12 and 16 is a child. So to look at a child and then decide to target that child for future sexual encounters

is just beyond being disgusting speaks to her possibly being a predator of some sort. Well, I tell you this, we say first we say that nobody meets other people at funerals. I guarantee when we post this video, we're going to get comments from people who are like, oh, no, that's not, that's not strange. I have a feeling this is maybe happens more than I know. I don't know. But what doesn't happen and what shouldn't happen is someone meeting an underage person and then allegedly sexually abusing them.

So let me go into a little bit how this happens. So the reporting indicates that the two apparently started communicating on social media, Melba. And it escalated, according to WPEC, it escalated into then illegal sexual activities multiple times in December. Melba, if that's true, is that. Is that a pattern you've seen before going from communicating on a social media platform or texting, and then it escalates into meeting up and obviously the allegations of sexual

contact? Yeah, absolutely. That's a very familiar pattern because, again, she's meeting the child where he's most comfortable. So he's comfortable on social media interacting that way. And that's another way of her showing like, hey, even though I may be older, I'm just like you. things you do. So it creates this false commonality in a way. And then once that grooming and also

the kind of disarming of the child in terms of letting their guard down, feeling safe and all of that, once that's been accomplished, then it moves offline into real life where unfortunately she made the choice to basically harm this child repeatedly over the course of time. By the way, off topic, but another serious issue I want to talk to you about. Can we talk for a second about debt? Yeah, debt doesn't just show up one day. It builds little by little credit cards, car loans, medical bills. Suddenly you are juggling payments. You are feeling stuck. Here's the good news. We got American financing as our sponsor. So they help homeowners like you every day. They use your home's equity and roll that high interest debt into one simple affordable payment.

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Sadly, I don't think there really is. Granted, technology progresses quite rapidly these days. I mean, especially in terms of what we've seen with AI and aspects of that, maybe there's something in the future that could lend itself to somehow balancing privacy rights, but also retaining the safety of children online. But that is an issue that's been well discussed. from Congress to you know boardrooms of various social media companies and all of that is it's something we have not really gotten a handle on not only as a

country but internationally as well because it's different we're not in the day and age so much of secret online chat rooms it's more it becomes so common to communicate with all different kinds of people on social media private messaging comments on photos and it just it's a little bit alarming and it makes me wonder why this is not the first case that I've covered where you see social media being a conduit to have these conversations. Yeah, I think this really lays at the feet of the parents. And to be clear, this is not blaming the parents.

But I think parents need to be a bit more vigilant in terms of who their child is connecting with on socials. I think every parent should be their child's friend on socials. So that way they know what they're posting, who they're communicating with. And again, this is not to take away the child's autonomy, but it's a matter of making. sure the child is safe and also you have to have very robust discussions with your child as well to be like listen the same things you don't want them to do quote unquote in real life is the same things you want to encourage them not to do on social media because you know if you wouldn't talk to a 20 year old in real life you wouldn't you know if you met a 20 year old at the store you wouldn't

exactly be like hey let me go somewhere with you it's the same mentality when you're interacting with someone who's older on social media no you don't need to go meet up up with them offline. By the way, the age of this boy was redacted in the police affidavit. Why is that? Because the child is the victim. And so victims, especially when they're underage victims, their name and their age are both obscured, generally.

Now, sometimes during the course of investigation, it may be revealed the age of the child, but the name never, ever gets released. Do you think whether the age will eventually be revealed during the course of this case as it progresses just so we have an understanding because I think it's important for the charges if you're talking about an age range of 12 to 16 years of age. Absolutely. There may be some nuggets to be found in the arrest affidavit if that is made public. But of course, if this actually does go to trial, that testimony and that evidence will come out and at that point we'll definitely know the age of the child. Again, assuming this goes to trial because I don't think this is a case that needs

to go in front of a jury. This needs to be a plea. about that in a minute. I want to get to that idea. But first, let me tell you, so according to CBS 12 News, authorities, they found out about these allegations in January. So, you know, even though the accusations are multiple encounters in December, relatively soon after is when authorities were alerted about this. And that's when apparently law enforcement found out about alleged text messages. What do I mean by that? Messages where the pair allegedly, quote, agreed that they should get their story straight, namely that it was the boy who started. the sexual activities. This is according to the affidavit. Melba, first of all, shocking,

right? If that's true, those texts are really, really bad. Those texts are bad for the defendant, great for the prosecution. The reality is this is a gross misunderstanding of the law that folks seem to have. A child can't consent. So even if in theory, the child was the one to, because again, this is a child so but we'll go down the rabbit hole for a moment if the child was the one to be like hey let's do this the child again can't consent so the adult who again is the adult the one with the responsibility should be like absolutely not and where's your mother and by the way and by the way mistake of the law is not a defense if the for whatever reason if the defendant was like no i thought consent even if they are underage i thought consent was a defense that's not that's not you can't argue

that correct correct so she sunk no matter which way you look at it uh even under the story of, oh, he started at first, it doesn't matter. She's still going down for it. You see this often blaming the underage alleged victim. And again, we don't know the circumstances about how this happened, but do you see that as a common tactic in these cases? Unfortunately, yes. Many times you see this in the case of a male predator and an underage girl. And sadly, we even saw this in R. Kelly and some other high profile cases where it's always, oh, it was she who started it and this and that. And she who came to, you know, you know, my house at this hour, and she wanted it. And that is, sadly, not an uncommon statement.

And it's another way also for the predator to distance themselves from what they've done. This wasn't my fault. So they're not taking that responsibility for their actions in harming this child. Again, child. What do you make of how quickly this was investigated? So if you are talking about multiple times in December when they allegedly had sexual contact, first you ask, how is it possible? that this young child would be in the position to be able to have these interactions with this adult on a repeated basis, right? So let's say seven times, right? I mean, seven charges, assuming it's for each incident. You wonder that. And then you think, well, if authorities were alerted about this

in January, now we have an arrest, what do you take away from the knowledge component, the lack of knowledge component, how quickly it is to identify these kinds of alleged allegations of abuse? talk to me about that. So what I think, again, this is based on what's publicly available and just kind of my hypothesis on this and from what I've seen, usually this will be a situation where if the child may be a brag to a friend or maybe, you know, left the computer open and the parents or guardian, someone older, saw these kind of exchanges and that then alerted them that there was a problem. So it usually would be a leak of that kind of store that then escalated

whether through the school system, a school counselor or something like that, or the parent themselves or a relative reporting that to law enforcement. So that's likely how this got revealed. Now, the actual execution of the crime, the seven times is not abnormal to me in terms of, if you think of two consenting adults, you know, seven dates as one would think of in the conventional sense over the course of a month is not abnormal. So taking this into the criminal context where, again, you have an adult, defendant, and a child, you can easily get access to a child multiple times. Again, if you've built that foundation of trust and I'm your friend and this isn't anything bad, there's nothing wrong that we're doing. Again, they're making the arrangements

to meet up. Likely, either the child may have been cutting classes or may have, you know, lied to their family and told them, hey, I'm going to go hang out with my friends. It then went and met up with the defendant, that type of thing. Do you imagine there are more communications between these two that are more specific about what allegedly happened between them? Because in order for purposes to prosecute this case, and I'll get into the statute in a second, I imagine you may need more than just the account of the alleged victim. I wonder, and how often do we see this, the alleged perpetrator and the alleged victim actually recounting what happened between them, their sexual episodes. Do you think that there's more that we're in those

communications than we know right now? Absolutely. Absolutely 100%. Because again, you're thinking about the child and their lack of maturity, they're going to be like, oh my gosh, I can't believe XYZ happened last night or the predator, the defendant, may be reaching out to the child and being like, wasn't yesterday wonderful? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's do it again. So that continued contact and sort of reaffirming that, again, in the defendant's mind, this is normal. We're in a relationship. It's okay. And don't worry about any weird feelings you may have. This is all good stuff. That's part of that predatory behavior of, again, taking away any guilt, you know, taking away, of course, any responsibility and continuing that communications to

further be able to molest and harm the child again. So Melva, here's my understanding of what the statute is. It says, quote, a person who intentionally touches in a lewd or lascivious manner, the breast genitals, genitals, genital area, or buttocks, or the clothing covering them of a person less than 16 years of age or forces or entices a person under 16 years of age to so touch the perpetrator commits lewd or lascivious molestation. That to me feels like a much more broad and straightforward way to successfully prosecute somebody other than, you know, if you're talking about, let's say, a rape statute, right? This is, covers, I think, a wide gamut of potential activity. Yes, it does. Because again, we all know that, sadly,

child molestation could come in many forms. And so the statute intended to try to capture as much of that as possible. And also bearing in mind that sometimes the child can't necessarily articulate the same way an adult can, the different things that happen to them. So they may not be using the traditional language of insertion and things like that. They don't know what that is. So they can be like, yeah, you know, touch my butt or whatever, that would be enough to be able to have a prosecution under that statement.

statute. Of course, not only the statement, but you do have to have other supporting pieces of evidence. Is it going to require the minor to testify? And what happens if the minor doesn't want to testify? Yeah, that's, again, that's a very tough one. You really don't want to retramatize this child because, again, they're trying to process what happened to them and understand that they've been taken advantage of, even though it may not feel that way to them in the moment, right? So, you have to be very careful about that. But a successful prosecution of this case would likely necessitate the child to testify or have some other way of preserving the child's testimony that allows for cross-examination.

So in other words, if there's some sort of taping, let's say, for instance, of deposition or something along those lines where the defense attorney has the opportunity to cross-examine the child to be able to test their credibility, but then replay that for the jury so they can see the interaction and then judge for themselves whether or not this was this actually happened or did it. Yeah, to be clear, because they can't just have like a forensic interview, have that play for the jury because there's no opportunity to cross-examine the minor victim here. So that wouldn't be sufficient. And you think about this and you wonder whether or not this would go to trial, whether or not a deal would be on the table.

My understanding is this is a second-degree felony and carries up to 15 years in prison. So if she took this to trial, gets convicted, seven counts, right? Do you think she would get 15 years in prison or would it be 15 years in prison for each count, you know, combined? It's run consecutively one after the other. How would it work, you think, in a case like this? It is possible to sentence her consecutively. I don't know that that would necessarily happen in this case. But again, it's still early days.

We still need to learn more about the defendant. Was she a survivor of sexual abuse or sexual assault? Are there any other mitigating factors, not in terms of her actions towards the victim, but in terms of her mental state, because, again, sadly, we know that hurt people, hurt people. So people that have been hurt, people that have been traumatized often act out in a similar way. So if that's the case, it's possible that she would face one 15-year prison sentence with the rest to run concurrently. So in other words, she's convicted on all seven counts. She's, you know, sentenced to all seven counts, but she serves the sentence concurrently,

meaning 15 years covers all seven versus 15, followed by 15, followed by 15, et cetera. By the way, you know, there's other factors that can go into sentencing and mitigation, too, like her age, 20 years old, not saying necessarily that would work in her favor, but maybe. Seven counts, right? I imagine that's for each alleged incident that happened in December. Maybe they're combining a couple. But I always wonder, if you charge that much, is it problematic for the prosecution? Because if you can't prove one or two or three of those episodes, does it weaken the overall case?

Again, one of those legal answers, it depends. So usually you charge for every incident that you're aware of. And the way you phrase it is on or about X date. So if it happens to be today is the sixth. So if it happened to have happened on the fifth, okay, fine, you're still okay from a charging perspective, even though you wrote on or about the 6th of May, even though it happened on the 4th or 5th, you're still covered. But if you start to lose instances,

you have to determine why you're losing those instances. So in other words, is it that there's no evidence whatsoever to substantiate that an incident happened on that particular day? Or is it that the survivor just doesn't remember, right? Because, again, all of it could be a fog. So, and it also depends on the strength of the evidence of each of the other instances. So again, let's say you have seven. You may have four that are really strong. You may lose three, but you're still going to get a conviction on the other four. So again, it just all

depends. You think this is going to be a plea deal? I do. I do. This is not one that you're going to want to drag out at a trial. And I mean this from the dependence perspective, because again, now everybody's going to know you're a predator, all the collateral consequences that come with that. So I'd see it highly unlikely that it'll be a trial from that perspective and also the survivor because again, the child has been traumatized. The family may not want to expose the child to the court system and having to, you know, go back and forth every single day to the courthouse and deal with that, dealing with cross-examination. It's a lot. I mean, it's a lot for an adult. So imagine a young child who's just trying to understand what happened and then eventually put this behind them.

So for the best interests of the child, a plea may be a good idea as well. What would that look like? What do you think? I would imagine it'd have to include some prison time. It can. I would probably think, and this is just me guessing, again, depends on her criminal history. It depends on if there's any mitigating factors or any aggravating factors as well, because there may be things that we're just not aware of that's not been made publicly available at this juncture. But I could see a plea ranging around if she has no priors or anything like that. three to five years in prison may be followed by an extensive time on probation to include a sex offender course where you have to basically go to therapy and, you know, work through why you are offending in this way. You may have to register on a sexual offender registry. So again,

that affects where you can live, where you can work. I mean, there's a lot of consequences around that. And also there's a possibility of staggering it. So maybe three to five years in prison, followed by maybe a year on house arrest, then followed by probation. You know, there's a few different ways to structure it. But that's, you know, unless something falls apart, then the numbers might be even lower. Now, before this case progresses, and before I let you go, I just want to know, were you surprised that she got bombed? I mean, I'm mixed on that.

Because, again, if she has no criminal history, when a judge, judge is looking at bond, they're looking at, are you going to come back to court? Most importantly, are you going to come back to court for trial? Are you a danger to the community? Now, clearly she was a danger to that one child, but is she a predator from the standpoint in, as in she's molesting multiple boys or multiple children? That would be a factor as well. And also, of course, the severity of the charge and all of that plays a role. So again, if she has no criminal history, if she's got ties to the community, has a job, and everyone had a job. But, But if she's well settled in the community and it's not like, you know, she's a foreign national or has contact somewhere else where she can up and leave, I could see why she was given bond.

But I'm sure she's on restrictions as well, meaning she has to check in with an officer on a monthly basis. She may have a curfew. I mean, there may be other parameters involving her release. It's not like she's out and just kind of walking around. She may have other things that she has to do while she's waiting for her case to be either tried or resolved. Melba Pearson. So good to see you. Thank you so much for your legal breakdown. Love having you on. Great seeing you, Melba. Oh, it's great to see you, Jesse. And that is all we have for you right now here on Sidebar, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus.

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