Former Santa Cruz County nurse pleads guilty in sex abuse case

SANTA CRUZ — A former Watsonville nurse involved in a child sex case pleaded guilty Thursday to four out of 44 felonies and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison, with the option for parole.

As a part of a plea deal struck with the Santa Cruz District Attorney’s Office, Rashel Brandon, 48, will be required to testify at the trial of her former co-defendant and to register as a sex offender for life, upon release.

“I would also like to apologize to the victims in this case; what was done to them by myself and others was heinous,” Brandon wrote, in part, in a statement she read aloud to the court Thursday. “It will affect them for the rest of their lives. For that, I wish I could turn back time and do what I should have done and contacted the authorities when I found out what my co-defendants had been doing for years.”

Brandon also apologized to her family, friends, co-workers and the community, saying that “these crimes rocked every one of these people to the core.” Brandon said she was seeking counseling while incarcerated.

Evidence presented in earlier case hearings included a series of videos depicting the sexual abuse of a 3-year-old and 10-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl.

The 48-year-old mother was previously employed by Dignity Health and has spent nearly six years in the Santa Cruz County Jail, among the jail’s longest-term inmates. The maximum sentence for her charges, absent a deal or exoneration, was a life prison term.

Brandon pleaded guilty to felony charges of sodomy with a victim under 10 years, two counts of lewd acts with a child under 14 and using a minor for a sex act.

Brandon was among three co-defendants charged as part of a May 2017 Watsonville Police Department investigation involving fellow nurse Emily Stephens, of Tucson, Arizona, and former Palo Alto Medical Foundation neurosurgeon James Kohut, who had transferred to practice in Arkansas shortly before his arrest but retained operating privileges at Dominican Hospital.

Kohut, of Soquel, had been charged with 48 felonies, and was alleged to have connected with multiple women online with plans to impregnate them and have sex with their children to perpetuate “taboo families,” according to court documents. He committed suicide in October 2019, while incarcerated at the county jail.

Stephens, described at the time by law enforcement as Kohut’s girlfriend, was pregnant at the time of her arrest. On Thursday, she remained scheduled for trial in September after a settlement conference this week, according to court documents.