OAKLAND (BCN)—An unrepentant 44-year-old man was sentenced today to 17 years and eight months in state prison for his conviction for the continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14 and for assaulting and making criminal threats against her mother in Hayward.
Alameda County prosecutor Tim Wellman said Edgar Patino, who still claims that he’s innocent, sexually abused a girl multiple times in 2012 and 2013 when he was dating the girl’s mother and the girl was only 11 and 12.
Wellman said that in late 2013, Patino also committed felony domestic violence against the girl’s mother, who was his girlfriend and was seven months pregnant at the time, by threatening to kill her and attacking her.
Patino placed a plastic bag over the woman’s head and attempted to suffocate her and then took the plastic bag off her head, threatened to kill her and shoved the plastic bag inside her mouth while holding the bag in place with his hands, according to Wellman.
However, the woman was able break free and remove the bag, Wellman said.
The girl didn’t tell her mother about the sexual abuse but she told other relatives, who eventually notified the Hayward Police Department in the summer of 2014, according to Wellman. Patino was then arrested on Oct. 1, 2014.
Jurors convicted Patino on Aug. 5 after deliberating for less than a full day.
Patino’s ex-girlfriend said in a letter read aloud in court by prosecutors today that she thought she and her daughter were being taken to “a safe and quiet place” when they moved in with Patino, but then he began abusing them both physically and psychologically.
The ex-girlfriend, who was present in court, said in the letter that she thought the abuse would stop but then it got worse.
She said, “I was afraid for my safety but I wasn’t sure what I could do” even though she felt humiliated.
The ex-girlfriend said the daughter Patino fathered with her will be better off without him in her life.
The ex-girlfriend’s older daughter, who’s now 16, said in a letter that also was read aloud by prosecutors, “It’s not fair that I’m still emotionally harmed while you walk away and pretend that you did nothing wrong.”
The girl, who also was present in court, told Alameda County Superior Court Judge Rhonda Burgess that she should sentence Patino “to the maximum punishment possible.”
Patino, who used the services of a Spanish interpreter, didn’t listen to his victims’ comments as he turned away and pulled his earphones out of his ears.
When it was his chance to speak, Patino said being convicted of sexually abusing a child was “the worst thing that ever happened to me” and was worse than being accused of murder or drug trafficking.
“I’m not upset, I’m disappointed because of the way I was stabbed in the back,” he said of the conviction.
“Honestly, this is humiliating,” he said, adding that his family in Mexico is “devastated” by what happened to him.
The judge said Patino’s comments show that “even today he shows no remorse for the great harm he inflicted.”
Burgess said that when Patino first threatened to kill his ex-girlfriend, “she didn’t think he was serious because she was pregnant but her opinion changed when he took action to carry out that threat” by trying to suffocate her.
Referring to the girl, Burgess said, “Her naivete was exploited and her body was violated.”
The judge said Patino was in a position of trust to take care of the girl but instead he engaged in “debauchery for a year on a consistent basis” and also disparaged her.