A California sheriff’s office says a 67-year-old man used an unlicensed home daycare to sexually abuse “numerous” children while his wife helped run the business out of their house.
Story Snapshot
- Javier RiveraMojica, 67, was arrested Wednesday in Shandon, California, after deputies served a search warrant at his home.
- The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office says he ran an unlicensed daycare with his wife and used it to reach multiple child victims.
- He faces multiple felony counts of lewd acts on children under 14, plus 22 felony enhancements.
- Investigators say the probe is active and more victims may come forward.
- The case fits a wider pattern of similar home-daycare abuse arrests reported across the country this year.
Sheriff’s Office Details the Arrest
The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office says detectives served a search warrant at a home in the 100 block of South Fourth Street in Shandon on Wednesday. Deputies arrested RiveraMojica at the scene without incident. The sheriff’s office says he “allegedly gained access to numerous victims through an unlicensed daycare that he and his wife were operating from their residence”.
Court records show RiveraMojica was booked on multiple counts of lewd acts on children under 14. He also faces 22 felony enhancements tied to those charges. Investigators say the case grew out of information developed during the department’s detective division, though the sheriff’s office has not released the criminal complaint or search warrant affidavit publicly.
Investigation Remains Open
The sheriff’s office says it is actively looking for additional survivors who may have had contact with the daycare. That signals investigators believe the case could grow beyond the victims already identified. As of now, no defense filing, attorney statement, or court document has publicly challenged the sheriff’s account of the arrest, the warrant, or the charges filed against RiveraMojica.
An arrest is an accusation, not a conviction, and RiveraMojica has not been tried. Still, the facts released so far come from an official law enforcement statement backed by a search warrant and formal charges, which gives the public record a solid factual foundation even before a trial happens.
Part of a Troubling National Pattern
This case is not isolated. Home daycares without state licenses have shown up again and again in similar allegations nationwide this year. In Delaware, a 57-year-old man was charged with sexually assaulting a child at an unlicensed daycare in his Brookside home, with police saying there may be more victims. In Tennessee, a man was accused of raping two girls under 10 over four years while running an unlicensed daycare from his house.
In Maryland, a man was accused of assaulting multiple children at an unlicensed home daycare his wife operated in Annapolis, with a second alleged victim coming forward after his first arrest. In New Mexico, federal investigators charged a childcare business owner after uncovering what they described as systematic abuse of a child in his care. Each case follows a similar shape: a home business without a state license, repeated access to children, and charges that emerged only after a formal police investigation.
Child safety researchers have long found that abuse is more often committed by someone a child already knows and trusts than by a stranger. Home daycare settings can create exactly that kind of repeated, private access, which is why investigators in these cases often treat the lack of licensing as a red flag tied to oversight, not just paperwork. Licensed daycares face background checks, inspections, and reporting rules that unlicensed operations skip entirely.
Why the Licensing Gap Matters
Parents searching for affordable childcare sometimes turn to informal, unlicensed arrangements without knowing what oversight they are giving up. States generally require licensed daycare operators to pass background checks, keep child-to-caregiver ratios in check, and submit to regular inspections. None of those safeguards apply when a business operates off the books, as investigators say happened in Shandon.
Cases like this one raise a question many parents and lawmakers on both sides of the political spectrum have asked for years: whether local and state agencies do enough to find and shut down unlicensed childcare operations before harm occurs, rather than only after an arrest. The Shandon case remains under investigation, and no trial date has been set.
Okay an idea, if you like children. I ran a home daycare. You can watch 4 over 2 years old or 2 under 2.
( this is unlicensed. With a license you can have 10). 2 under 2 pays around 38k per year. 4 over 2 pays about 40k.
10, licensed, pays about 200k
I paid everything while my…— Julie Butcher (@Julie_Butcher) August 6, 2026
Sources:
nypost.com, sanluisobispo.com, globalnews.ca, winnipeg.citynews.ca, lakemchenryscanner.com
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