A 21-year-old local man was sentenced to serve at least the next 15 years in prison following a Thursday hearing at the Bannock County Courthouse, where he was convicted of rape for impregnating a 16-year-old girl.

The legal troubles for Taisen Joe Lopez-Scharer, of Pocatello, remain far from over, however.

Prosecutors in Bonneville County charged him in March with one count of lewd conduct with a child under 16 involving a girl who was 4 or 5 years old at the time, with the abuse alleged to have occurred in 2021.

In June, Bonneville County prosecutors also charged him with three counts of rape and another count of lewd conduct involving a second, separate victim who was between 5 and 8 years old at the time, with the abuse alleged to have occurred between 2017 and 2021, according to court records the Idaho State Journal obtained Friday.

Lopez-Scharer appeared before 6th District Judge Javier Gabiola on Thursday, where he was sentenced under a plea agreement reached in March to a single count of statutory rape, court records show. As part of that agreement, three additional rape counts in the same case were dismissed, along with all four counts in a second Bannock County case charging him with child sexual exploitation.

Lopez-Scharer was originally arrested in September 2024 on four counts of statutory rape after police said he impregnated a then-16-year-old girl.

A second case was filed against him in August 2025, charging him with sexual exploitation of a child and possession of sexually exploitative material after he allegedly solicited explicit images from an autistic teenager in Iowa.

An earlier, binding plea deal in the original rape case — which would have had Lopez-Scharer plead guilty to two reduced counts of felony injury to a child instead, and would have kept him off the sex offender registry — was rejected by Judge Gabiola in July 2025, reinstating the original rape charges and sending the case back to the trial calendar.

The exploitation case had not yet been filed at the time of that earlier deal. A new, nonbinding agreement covering both cases was reached this past March, under which Lopez-Scharer pleaded guilty to a single rape count and the exploitation case was dismissed in its entirety.

During Thursday’s sentencing hearing, the victim’s mother read a written impact statement on her daughter’s behalf, and the victim herself declined to make a statement. Lopez-Scharer also declined to address the court, according to court minutes.

Gabiola sentenced Lopez-Scharer to a minimum fixed term of 15 years, followed by an indeterminate term of up to 20 years, for a unified sentence not to exceed 35 years, court records show. He also ordered Lopez-Scharer to pay $545.50 in court costs, a $1,000 fine and an additional $2,500 fine tied to Idaho’s crime-of-violence statute, along with $325 in restitution to the Idaho Industrial Commission.

A no-contact order was issued for 35 years, and Lopez-Scharer was ordered to register as a sex offender and submit a DNA sample. His request for public defender fee reimbursement was waived.

The March caseThe lewd conduct charge filed in Bonneville County in March traces back to a report first made in June 2021, when a girl, then 8 years old, disclosed that Lopez-Scharer had touched her inappropriately over her clothing on one or two occasions at an Idaho Falls residence, the police report says.

The girl told investigators at the time that Lopez-Scharer told her not to tell anyone, and that he touched her in the same way her parents touched each other during sex, the report states. A sexual assault nurse exam was not performed at the time, and the case went without a documented investigation for years, court records show.

The case was reassigned to a different detective in 2025, who located a video of a 2021 forensic interview and, after the girl was unable to provide an exact timeframe during that original interview, arranged for her to be interviewed again in August 2025, according to court records.

In the second interview, the girl, by then 13, said Lopez-Scharer inappropriately touched her on multiple occasions over her clothing during a period when he was staying at her home, and that the abuse stopped after she told a relative, the report states.

The June caseThe June case stems from a report made to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare in August 2022 alleging Lopez-Scharer, then 17, had been sexually abusing a different girl, who was 9 years old at the time, for multiple years.

That case was assigned to an Idaho Falls police officer who has since resigned from the department. Investigators later found no documentation that any investigation had been conducted during the roughly four years the case was assigned to him, even as he had continued providing the girl’s mother with updates suggesting the case was active, according to court records.

A report from the girl’s elementary school documenting a 2022 disclosure of abuse to staff was also never followed up on, in part because staff believed the case was already under investigation, the records show.

The case was reassigned in March 2026. A forensic interview conducted in April, when the girl was 13, detailed allegations spanning from 2017, when she was about 5, through 2021, when she was 8, including repeated instances of forced oral sex and vaginal rape, according to court records. The girl said the abuse occurred at addresses in Idaho Falls and that Lopez-Scharer would tell her not to tell anyone.

Investigators say Lopez-Scharer’s father corroborated that the girl had been to his residence multiple times and that Lopez-Scharer had at times been left responsible for children in the home for short periods while his father ran errands.

When investigators interviewed Lopez-Scharer in March, he denied the allegations at points but also told them he had been “possessed by a demon” from around age 5 until he was about 18, and that the demon would take over his body, causing him to black out with no memory of what happened while in that state, according to court records.

He said it was possible he had molested the girl during one of these episodes but that he would have no memory of it if so. His father told investigators he had no recollection of Lopez-Scharer ever claiming to be possessed by a demon, the records show.

How the cases came to lightIdaho Falls Police Department Public Information Officer Jessica Clements said the department could not comment on personnel matters when asked about the yearslong gap in investigating the June case.

“Idaho law does not allow us to comment on personnel issues,” Clements said. “That being said, when we became aware that cases had not been properly investigated they were reassigned for thorough and proper investigation. IFPD is committed to ensuring that all cases are properly and promptly investigated to the best of our ability, and we have made adjustments to our supervision processes to make sure this doesn’t happen in the future.”

According to court records, both Bonneville County cases were revisited after Lopez-Scharer was interviewed by Pocatello police in September 2024 in connection with the Bannock County rape investigation involving the pregnant 16-year-old — the same case that resulted in Thursday’s sentencing.

During that interview, Lopez-Scharer admitted to molesting two other young relatives when he himself was a child, telling investigators that “girls his age treat guys like (crap),” according to court records.

Court proceedingsIn the June case, Lopez-Scharer was arraigned June 16 before 7th District Magistrate Judge Keith M. Walker, a senior judge who was sitting in for 7th District Magistrate Judge John Dewey.

A preliminary hearing in that case has been continued twice, most recently from July 15, and is now scheduled for July 29 before 7th District Magistrate Judge James Howard Barrett Jr., a senior judge expected to sit in for Judge Tawnya Rawlings that day.

In the March case, Lopez-Scharer made his initial appearance May 5 before Dewey. A preliminary hearing was held June 10, and he was arraigned in district court June 23 before 7th District Judge Brendon Taylor.

A pretrial conference was held Tuesday before 7th District Judge Stevan H. Thompson, a senior judge sitting in for Taylor, who would preside over the trial.

Attorneys in that case advised the court Tuesday that they may pursue a resolution encompassing both Bonneville County cases, or seek mediation, following the outcome of the Bannock County sentencing, though no motion to consolidate the two cases has been filed, according to Bonneville County Prosecutor Randy Neal.

The case remains scheduled for trial Aug. 17.

Neal said his office is generally restricted from commenting on the substance of pending cases beyond what has been said in open court or included in publicly filed documents.

The Pocatello defense attorney who represented Lopez-Scharer on the Bannock County cases, Sean P. Wynn, did not return the Journal’s request for comment.

Lopez-Scharer is represented in both Bonneville County cases by Melody Ann McCombs, of the Idaho Falls-based John Malek Law Group. When reached via text Friday, the John Malek Law Group said, “At this time, Ms. McCombs has no comment regarding this matter.”

Bannock County Prosecutor Ian Johnson said, “We’re pleased with the outcome but have no comment.”

Rape and lewd conduct are both punishable by up to life in prison and a fine of up to $50,000.