SAN JOSE — Disgraced former city councilmember Omar Torres was sentenced to 18 years in prison Friday after his April conviction for sexually abusing a younger relative in the 1990s, a shocking revelation that surfaced after a separate scandal involving Torres’ reputed sexual interest in minors.

Torres, 43, appeared in Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Cynthia Sevely’s courtroom, where she announced the sentence, which consists of three consecutive six-year terms. It was the maximum sentence allowed, and was recommended by both the district attorney’s office and county Probation Department in a presentencing report.

In often tearful testimony, the victim, identified in court proceedings as John Doe, graphically recounted the serial sexual abuse he suffered at the hand of Torres from school age until his early teen years. He told the judge about how he had severe behavioral issues, and descended into substance abuse, ill physical health and homelessness well into adulthood, which he traced back to Torres’ actions.

It took decades for him, he said, to overcome Torres’ assertion that “nobody will believe you” if he tried to speak out about the crimes, and called out what he described as Torres’ attempts to minimize the abuse.

“You are a plague that needed to be stopped … a wolf that presented himself as a shepherd,” Doe said. “You are the true definition of a narcissist.”

By the end of the Friday morning hearing, Torres had heard the victim’s family talk about how they were ostracized by relatives angry about Doe finally coming forward — as well as supporters including Torres’ sister pleading for mercy from the judge. The former politician gave his own emotional remarks before he learned of his legal fate.

“I’m ashamed of my actions,” Torres said, before apologizing to the victim and his family. “I scarred them and I hope they can find it in their hearts to forgive me … I am ready to serve my time and (face) the consequences.”

Sevely praised Doe’s “tremendous courage” in bringing Torres’ crimes to light, a sentiment that Deputy District Attorney Jason Malinsky echoed.

“The long sentence is a powerful statement to the victim who waited a long time for justice, and to the community that the defendant deceived and betrayed,” Malinsky said. “Justice was done.”

Torres’ sentence will be reduced by about a year based on the time he has spent in county jail custody since his arrest last November. He will also be required to register as a sex offender upon his release.

In April, Torres pleaded no contest to three felony counts: sodomy, oral copulation, and lewd and lascivious acts with a minor under the age of 14, stemming from a Nov. 25, 1999 encounter with his younger relative. Authorities stated in court documents that Torres was 18 and the victim was 13 at the time of the crime, and the victim told authorities that the abuse started when he was 4 years old, escalating in severity until that 1999 instance after Torres became a legal adult.

In a court filing prior to Torres’ sentencing, his attorney Nelson McElmurry requested that Sevely sentence his client to five years in prison. McElmurry cited a rehabilitative journey since the crime occurred that included extensive public service culminating in Torres’ election to the San Jose City Council, a position he gave up last November after he was criminally charged.

In court Friday, McElmurry asked the judge to factor in how Torres was both a minor and past sexual abuse victim himself when most of the crimes against Doe occurred.

Malinsky objected to the defense’s characterization in his own court filing, arguing that Torres had shown middling remorse and benefited from keeping the crime secret for a quarter-century, leading to the victim suffering an array of post-traumatic stress effects in the intervening years.

The road to Torres’ conviction first became public last October, when he was detained and questioned by San Jose detectives who were initially conducting a separate investigation at his request. Torres claimed that a Chicago man was extorting him under a threat to reveal a sexual tryst to his partner and colleagues.

But the investigation uncovered sexually explicit text exchanges from 2022 between Torres and the man in which they shared sexual fantasies that included Torres describing the genitalia of an autistic 11-year-old boy with whom he has a family-type relationship. One of the messages, in the midst of discussing a multi-partner sexual encounter, involved Torres asking the man if “U got any homies under 18.” After his police interrogation became publicly known but before the sexual abuse allegation was made, Torres claimed that the messages were part of a fantasy role-play that the Chicago man then exploited.

Authorities said the resulting media coverage of the scandal prompted his relative to report his abuse to police on Nov. 4. That was soon followed by a police-monitored phone call between the victim and Torres, who reportedly admitted to sexually abusing the victim and said his behavior was in part a consequence of his own sexual abuse as a child. Torres was arrested the next day.

Friday, Doe told the judge he came forward to authorities to quell the possibility of new crimes against children.

“His text messages never read as fantasy role-play to me because I knew what he was capable of,” Doe said. “This was never revenge in any way. He put me in a position to speak up … What I cared about is him not hurting anyone else.”

In dueling sentencing memos filed by McElmurry and Malinsky, the two attorneys sparred over the extent to which Torres had reformed himself and exactly how much culpability he was accepting when he entered his no-contest plea earlier this year.

McElmurry in arguing for a lenient sentence, cited Torres’ “youth at the time of the offenses, his own severe victimization as a child, his self-awareness and voluntary cessation of the conduct upon turning 18, and his extraordinary record of rehabilitation and service over the last 25 years. He also referenced a defense-commissioned report by a forensic psychologist who wrote that the sexual abuse by Torres “was not the product of inherent predation and pedophilia but rather maladaptive coping with PTSD and immature reasoning of a youth already deeply compromised by years of unresolved trauma.”

Malinsky called the report “self-serving” and unsupported by evidence. He outlined the serial abuse, and cited a statement Doe made to probation officers — and repeated in court Friday — saying “it was happening so often that I knew as soon as I was alone (Omar) would appear … many times it was him escorting me into his room and within a matter of just a few minutes he would force me” into sex acts.

The prosecutor challenged a defense claim that Torres ended the abuse in an act of self-realization. Malinsky cited the victim’s assertion that after a family conversation involving the abuse of a separate relative by an uncle, Torres realized that he would be found out if he continued his behavior.

The probation presentencing report described a “troubling lack of remorse” by Torres and “showed a disturbing focus on how he would be represented in the headlines rather than taking responsibility for his actions,” and both Malinsky and Doe criticized Torres’ later reference to the police-monitored call as an entrapment.

“I believe you were only remorseful,” Doe said in court Friday, “because you were caught.”

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