Kikuchi, 57, pleaded no contest to 23 counts of sexual abuse of a minor. He did not reach a settlement agreement with prosecutors, but the open plea means he won\u2019t go through the trial process.
Kikuchi will be required to register as a sex offender and will be sentenced next month. He faces a maximum of 19 years and four months in prison.
In a no-contest plea, a defendant neither admits nor denies a charge, but the court treats those who plead no contest as guilty.
Kikuchi was arrested in September 2015 and was accused of having unlawful sexual contact with a student on his basketball team multiple times during 2015, when she was 15 and 16 years old.
After hearing a rumor about the girl and the coach, a school administrator notified police.
Before his bail review hearing in October 2015, the court received dozens of letters of support for Kikuchi, who was a well-known and respected coach in the close-knit Asian American basketball community. A number of community members attended his arraignment and bail review.
At that bail hearing, prosecutor Rena Durrant introduced text messages retrieved from the victim\u2019s cellphone after she deleted them. During the hearing, Durrant read aloud threatening texts that she said Kikuchi sent to the girl after she tried to break off the relationship multiple times.
One message, which referred to other players on the team, read, \u201cDon\u2019t piss me off. If you do this, I will move up other girls,» according to Durrant. The prosecutor said Kikuchi threatened to take some of the victim\u2019s clothes and demanded that she give a pair of shoes back to him. \u201cI\u2019ll make sure we are enemies,\u201d one text read. \u201cDon\u2019t push me, cuz I\u2019ll get ugly as …, ok? Don\u2019t push me!!\u201d
At Kikuchi\u2019s preliminary hearing in November 2016, Durrant introduced more of the 52,000 text messages that she said Kikuchi had exchanged with the victim over the course of seven months.
In those texts, the girl told Kikuchi that he was hurting her physically. Multiple times via text, she asked him to stop \u2014 but he didn\u2019t and wrote back that he loved her, Durrant said.
On May 5, the girl texted Kikuchi that she knew his actions were out of love, but \u201cif I say stop please stop, ok. I know it\u2019s love but still,\u201d Durrant said. According to the documents, he replied, \u201cok, but don\u2019t say stop because I won\u2019t all the time.\u201d
Kikuchi\u2019s 23 counts included 12 felony counts of sexual penetration by foreign object, five felony counts of committing a lewd act upon a child, one felony count of oral copulation of a person under 16 and five misdemeanor counts of child molesting.
He is due to be sentenced Feb. 9 at the Los Angeles County Superior Court\u2019s Alhambra Courthouse.
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