A registered sex offender from Santa Clara has been convicted in Indiana of raping a 12-year-old girl he met online, turning a case that began with a missing-child report into a multi-count felony conviction. Bernardo Tapia is still awaiting sentencing, and separate charges in another Indiana county remain unresolved.
According to WIBC 93.1 FM, court records show Tapia was convicted of two felony counts each of rape, child molesting, child sexual trafficking and strangulation. He was also charged with one count of obstruction of justice, a Level 6 felony.
The investigation began in September 2024 after the girl's family reported her missing from Greene County and told police they believed she had met an older man online. The Bloomingtonian reported that investigators determined Tapia picked her up at her home and took her to a motel in Bedford, in Lawrence County; Indiana State Police arrested him in Elkhart County on Sept. 26, 2024.
Sentencing And Separate Charges Are Still Ahead
Tapia is scheduled to appear for a pretrial conference in Greene Circuit Court on Aug. 26, with sentencing in the Lawrence County case set for Aug. 27, WIBC reported. The Lawrence County conviction does not resolve the separate Greene County case, where he faces charges of child solicitation, inappropriate communication with a child, dissemination of matter harmful to minors and four counts of possession of child pornography.
Those allegations were already part of the case when Hoodline's earlier arrest report described Tapia as a 43-year-old California man accused of meeting the girl online and taking her to a Bedford hotel. The conviction is a substantive development from that 2024 report, while the Greene County accusations still await their own court resolution.
What Happens Next
Sentencing will determine the punishment for the Lawrence County convictions, with the hearing scheduled for Aug. 27. As of Friday, July 31, Tapia had not yet been sentenced, and the Greene County allegations remained pending rather than adjudicated.
