SAN DIEGO - The husband of a home daycare provider molested a 4-year-old girl and her two older brothers while laying down with them for naps, and while his wife was cooking, a prosecutor said Monday.

But a defense attorney said the accusations against his client were false.

Hector Herrera, 54, is charged with one count of oral copulation on a child and three counts of child molestation. He faces 60 years to life in prison if convicted.

The case against Herrera came to light on May 16, 2011, when the 4-year-old girl told her mother that she was molested several days earlier by the defendant at Shining Stars Daycare in the 3900 block of Boston Avenue, said Deputy District Attorney Harrison Kennedy.

The girl told her mother, "Hector touched me here (pointing to her vagina)," the prosecutor said in his opening statement of trial. Later, the girl told a police officer that Herrera molested her in another way, the
prosecutor told the jury.

The girl's mother talked to her two boys, ages 6 and 8, and they subsequently told police that Herrera touched their private areas over their clothes, Kennedy said.

"None of it's true," defense attorney David Thompson told the jury.

He said Herrera wasn't working at the time the allegations came to light and was helping his wife with the children who came to her daycare.

Thompson urged jurors to find his client not guilty and give him his life back.

"Hector never touched them in the way they described," Thompson said.

Testimony in Herrera's trial is expected to last about three days in the courtroom of Judge Theodore Weathers.