Sex charges dropped against Newport Beach surgeon and his girlfriend

Five years after prosecutors announced charges against a Newport Beach surgeon and his girlfriend, portraying them as serial predators who drugged vulnerable women, a judge has thrown out the last remaining sex charges in the case.

In ruling that there was too little evidence to send Grant Robicheaux and Cerissa Riley to trial for allegedly drugging and sexually assaulting two women, Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael Leversen on Friday handed the defendants a major victory but an incomplete one.

The two still face a felony charge of slipping GHB into the drink of one of the women, the judge ruled. Robicheaux, an orthopedic surgeon once deemed the county’s “Most Eligible Bachelor” by a local magazine, also faces two felony counts of illegal possession of assault weapons, plus misdemeanor charges of possessing cocaine and other drugs.

The case has been a tabloid favorite, in part because of Robicheaux’s appearance on the Bravo reality show “Online Dating Rituals of the American Male.”

Defense attorneys have portrayed Robicheaux and Riley, a former schoolteacher, as hard-partying swingers. Both deny having nonconsensual sex with any of the accusers.

After announcing charges against the couple in 2018, Orange County prosecutors said that more than a dozen women had accused Robicheaux of attacking them, with some alleging Riley’s participation.

Robicheaux was charged with sexually assaulting five women. Riley was charged with being involved in attacks on three.

Defense attorney Philip Cohen, left, Grant Robicheaux, center, and his girlfriend, Cerissa Riley, leave the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach in 2020.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Then-Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas said a search of Robicheaux’s property had turned up “tens or hundreds” of apparently incriminating home videos, some featuring women “highly intoxicated beyond the ability to consent or resist.”

Rackauckas characterized the couple as predators who found victims in Newport Beach bars and restaurants and lured them to Robicheaux’s home for sex after plying them with drugs. One accuser compared them to “Bonnie and Clyde.”

The case quickly became entangled in politics, with Todd Spitzer, who was running for district attorney, accusing Rackauckas of embellishing the case and exploiting it in hopes of winning reelection.

After Spitzer won, he ordered a review of the case and announced it had “serious proof problems.” There were no videos of incapacitated women being sexually assaulted, he said.

But Orange County Superior Court Judge Gregory Jones refused to let Spitzer dismiss the charges and took the rare step of removing the local district attorney’s office from the case, saying Spitzer’s position had left his prosecutors “hopelessly conflicted.”

The California attorney general’s office announced last August that it would proceed against the defendants with a focus on allegations by the remaining two victims.