Escalera pleads guilty to sexually abusing, supplying fentanyl to victims
information released
A Chelan man who admitted to supplying drugs to children in exchange for sexual favors and photographs was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
On Friday, Chelan County Superior Court Judge Robert Jourdan sentenced Abraham Escalera, 41, to 15 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to three felony sex offenses and a gross misdemeanor of obstructing a law enforcement officer. He is sentenced to 171 months for the felonies and 364 days for the gross misdemeanor and three years of community custody.
In September, Escalera, who has been held in the Chelan County Regional Justice Center since November 2023, pled guilty to the following crimes:
- Promoting commercial sexual abuse of a minor (Class A felony)
- Delivery of narcotics to a minor (Class B felony)
- Commercial sexual abuse of a minor (Class B felony)
- Obstructing a law enforcement officer (a misdemeanor)
Escalera was originally charged with 13 felony counts and the misdemeanor. His sentencing on Friday brings conflicting feelings, said Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Micaela Meadows of the Chelan County Prosecutor’s Office. Had Escalera gone to trial, he may have been facing life in prison.
“Our justice system is designed to protect the rights of defendants, which is a cornerstone of our legal system,” Meadows said. “However, in cases like this, where the offender has traumatized two children to the point that they are unable to talk in a courtroom about what was done to them, that might mean we can’t hold an offender accountable at the level they deserve — at least, not without doing more harm to the survivors in the process.”
Escalera was arrested nearly two years ago. From 2021 to 2022, he repeatedly sexually abused two child victims, who were under 15 and 13 years old and known to him, after giving the children fentanyl pills.
When Escalera was approached by law enforcement in October 2023, he refused to comply with a warrant, directing him to turn his cell phone over to detectives. When his phone was eventually searched, law enforcement found explicit photos of the two children and Escalera.
As a condition of his plea agreement, Escalera admitted in a written statement to providing drugs to the children and sexually abusing them.
In an interview with law enforcement, one of the survivors spoke of ongoing, daily trauma, including anxiety, fear, depression and a high distrust of people, especially men. The crimes have touched all aspects of the survivor’s life, from school and work to personal and family relationships. The survivor spoke of being reminded of the incident over and over because of reports in the local newspaper and ongoing court dates. In addition, a father of a survivor described watching his child detox from fentanyl as the hardest thing he has ever experienced in his life.
“In cases that go to trial, it is usually necessary for a survivor to testify. Asking a survivor to face their abuser in court, after they have been severely traumatized, is an enormous expectation to put on anyone, especially a child. They never asked for what was done to them, but now have to relive it multiple times,” Meadows said. “For us, this case was heavily focused on balancing justice with the well-being of the survivors and reducing the potential to re-traumatize the child survivors.”
Note: Chelan County values the privacy of victims who have experienced traumatic events. The County does not identify victims unless they choose to be identified. It is our hope that outside agencies recognize the trauma victims experience and also pledge to not release information that identifies them in public communications or reporting. Information that identifies a victim includes, but is not limited to, name, current age, age when the crime was committed, gender, hometown, the relationship to the offender and where they attend school. Victims also can be identified by quoting and identifying a parent or guardian. The Chelan County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office provides no further comment on this case.
