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WACO, Texas (KWTX) - UPDATE: A former Waco truck driver was convicted Thursday of sexually assaulting his 12-year-old goddaughter over a three-month period in 2018.

Jurors in the 54th State District Court deliberated almost 8 hours before finding Julio Arellano-Alvarez guilty of continuous sexual abuse of a child.

After the guilty verdict was returned Judge Susan Kelly ordered Arellano-Alvarez, 36, who had been free on bond, to be taken into custody and moved to the McLennan County Jail.

The punishment phase of the trial is set to begin Friday morning.

Arellano-Alvarez faces a minimum of 25 years without the possibility of parole up to life in prison without parole.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE:

Julio Arellano-Alvarez’s stepdaughter and another of his supporters testified Wednesday that they were surprised to learn that he had been charged with sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl in Waco, with one calling his accuser a narcissistic liar.

Prosecutors Tara Avants and Luke McCowan rested their case against Arellano-Alvarez Wednesday afternoon after the testimonies of a Waco psychologist and the Waco police detective who arrested the 36-year-old former truck driver.

Arellano-Alvarez is on trial in Waco’s 54th State District Court on a continuous sexual abuse of a child charge, which is punishable by a minimum of 25 years in prison without parole up to life without parole.

The alleged victim, a recent graduate from a Waco-area high school, spent her second partial day on the stand Wednesday under cross-examination from defense attorneys Robert Callahan and Scarlet Petrucci. The woman, who is now 18, testified Tuesday that Arellano-Alvarez, her stepfather’s best friend, sexually assaulted her at least 20 to 25 times from March 2018 to May 2018 at her family’s Lake Air Drive apartment, in a dark parking lot and inside the cab of an 18-wheeler.

The woman testified that she has had a troubled life, including being sexually assaulted by Arellano-Alvarez and another younger man and coping with an alcoholic mother and a father who died by suicide. She said she has been hospitalized at least three times after her own suicide attempts and continues to struggle with depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Arellano-Alvarez, her godfather, was a regular visitor at the apartment she shared with her mother, her stepfather and her siblings, she said.

In testimony before the state rested its case, Waco psychologist Lee Carter, a child sex abuse expert, got into a spirited exchange with Callahan during cross-examination. Carter called out Callahan for what Carter characterized as the attorney’s misrepresentation of studies that exaggerate the number of false accusations in child sex abuse cases.

Callahan asked Carter about a study that showed the rate of false accusations could be as high as 36 percent. Carter disagreed, suggesting better research shows those figures to be closer to 6 to 8 percent.

“I’m not going to be taken down a rabbit hole by someone’s theories that are unfounded,” Carter told Callahan.

In defense testimony, a woman who identified herself as the alleged victim’s stepsister, called her a “very narcissistic child,” adding that Arellano-Alvarez never acted improperly with her or any of her siblings.

The witness also said the alleged victim “is not a very truthful person.” Those characterizations drew objections from Avants, who complained the witness is not an expert and that the defense line of questioning constituted improper impeachment of an alleged victim.

Judge Susan Kelly agreed, sustaining the objections and instructing Callahan to move on.

The woman told Avants that she hasn’t spoken to her stepsister since 2018.

Defense testimony will continue when the trial enters its fourth day Thursday.