Crime & Courts

Anchorage woman sentenced to 10 years for sexually abusing a child at her day care

Former East Anchorage day care owner Marcela Orand was sentenced Tuesday to a decade in prison for sexually abusing a client's daughter in a case that uncovered another instance of abuse nearly two decades earlier.

Superior Court Judge Michael Wolverton handed down a sentence of 15 years with five years suspended on a second-degree sexual abuse of a minor charge, which the 36-year-old woman pleaded guilty to in July.

"I focused on the seriousness of the offense" during the hearing, said District Attorney Clint Campion. "The child was young and extremely vulnerable … Ms. Orand was being paid to care for the child as a licensed child care provider. There is a trust that parents put into those providers to have their children for the majority of the day."

[Is your child safe at day care? Ask these questions, then decide.]

In early October 2015, the Anchorage Police Department got a report from a parent that Orand, the owner of the home-based day care Monkey's Little Ones, had sexually abused a girl between October 2011 and June 2014.

Campion said Orand ran the business from her home in East Anchorage. State business records show she ran the licensed day care from 2011 to 2015, and then its license expired.

In a criminal complaint in the case, an APD detective wrote that the child told her mother Orand sexually abused her. The girl was interviewed at a child advocacy center and again stated that Orand sexually abused her, the complaint said.

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[Former day care owner charged with sexually abusing child]

Orand was arrested and charged in November 2015, but she quickly posted bail, according to court records. Another victim came forward about a month later, according to an affidavit outlining the facts of the case, filed as a part of the plea deal.

After seeing reports about Orand's arrest, the woman told police she and her brother had been sexually abused by Orand between 1997 and 1999, according to the affidavit. She said she was about 7 years old and her brother was 5.

At that time the siblings were placed in a day care named Eugenia's Homecare, owned and operated by Orand's mother, according to the affidavit. Orand sexually abuse the boy "on a regular basis" in the three years they went to the day care, the affidavit says.

There were additional statements from parents given to police in the process of the investigation against Orand, but forensic interviews with children did not result in "sufficient disclosures," Campion said.

Two victims addressed the court during the sentencing, Campion said. The mother of the 6-year-old girl said Orand also committed physical abuse against her daughter, he said.

"She expressed her feelings to Ms. Orand that there was a lot more (abuse) than what she pled guilty to," Campion said.

Orand did not give a statement at the sentencing, according to Campion.

This story was updated to remove the birth date of the child. 

Jerzy Shedlock

Jerzy Shedlock is a former reporter for Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2017.

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