Convicted molester indicted for fondling boy

An Oahu grand jury has indicted a convicted molester on charges he fondled a 10-year-old boy over a three-month period beginning in August.

Christopher Brainerd, 41, of Kapahulu, was indicted yesterday on five counts of third-degree assault and one count of failure to comply with sex-offender registration requirements. Circuit Judge Derrick Chan confirmed bail at $50,000.

Brainerd was arrested Nov. 8 at the University of Hawaii School of Medicine in Kakaako, where he worked in the information technology department. Police had followed up on a report from a video store owner who spotted the boy sitting on Brainerd's lap two months earlier and had told Brainerd it was inappropriate. The video store owner called police Oct. 28 after he overheard some boys saying the boy had been to Brainerd's house.

According to police, the boy met Brainerd two years earlier at a Moiliili game store when he was in the third grade, and he had accompanied Brainerd to his previous address and to his current Kapahulu address.

Police later learned Brainerd was a convicted sex offender. In July 1996, Circuit Judge Victoria Marks sentenced Brainerd, then a Kamehameha Schools video technician, to a year in jail as a condition of five years probation for fondling an 8-year-old boy. The boy was not a Kamehameha student.

Prosecutors later learned Brainerd had a 1988 conviction in another state for a similar offense. He was sentenced to three years probation in that matter.

If convicted, Brainerd faces a five-year prison term.