24 Child Molesters Released

At least 24 convicted child molesters have been freed from prison in the month since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a California law on prosecuting sex offenders, according to a review of state corrections records.

They range from a 73-year-old minister convicted of molesting his two daughters in Tulare County in the 1970s to a Lancaster karate instructor who pleaded no contest last year to 14 counts of lewd conduct with his niece and a boy in the family.

Prosecutors in California expect to eventually release hundreds of prisoners in response to the Supreme Court ruling, which barred authorities from retroactively extending the period during which those accused of sex crimes against minors could be prosecuted.

Having the offenders back on the streets -- often years before their sentences were supposed to end -- leaves prosecutors frustrated and some victims bitter and worried.

“I’m angry, really angry, upset,” said 33-year-old Tracey Salaices, whose uncle, the karate instructor, walked out of Salinas Valley State Prison last Thursday after serving seven months of a 27-year sentence for molesting her and the boy.

“I felt like everything that I went through and that I did was in vain,” said Salaices, who testified against Daniel Robert Payan last year in a Pasadena courtroom.

Authorities estimate that 800 people were prosecuted under the 1994 state law that permitted charges to be filed against accused child molesters for long-ago crimes.

It gave prosecutors one year after authorities were notified of an alleged sex crime against a child to file criminal charges no matter how long ago the incident occurred.

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision, prosecutors are dismissing charges alleging sexual abuse that occurred before 1988.

Officials said they are still trying to determine exactly how many of those charged under the law are in prison or jail.

Los Angeles prosecutors initially estimated that 200 cases in Los Angeles County would be compromised by the ruling. But Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Bill Hodgman, who oversees the sex crimes unit, now says, “The number will be more.”

Meanwhile, his staff is painstakingly reviewing cases. On Wednesday, the office filed its first three requests to release convicted child abusers.

“We’ve got to get the wrongfully imprisoned out,” Hodgman said, “but we must take care not to let someone out we shouldn’t.”

Payan was the first -- and so far only -- prisoner freed from Los Angeles.

At his sentencing hearing last year, Superior Court Judge Judson W. Morris Jr. said Payan’s crimes were among the worst he had encountered in his 38 years as a peace officer, prosecutor and judge.

Morris said that he was so stunned by a taped conversation between Payan and his victim in which the defendant admitted the molestations that he jailed the 60-year-old defendant, who had been released on bail. The tape was recorded by police as part of their investigation. Payan pleaded no contest to all 15 counts later that day.

“The defendant absolutely in graphic terms in his own voice repeated to [Salaices] on the phone all the horrible things he had done to her,” the judge said at the time. “He took credit for acts from the time she was a little girl all the way through her teen years. And it sounded as if in that conversation he was taking credit for those acts with pride.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Natalie Adominian said investigators are looking into allegations against Payan made by other victims.

But she did not have evidence of a more recent crime that might have kept him behind bars. “I’ve tried everything that I could think of,” she said.

Besides examining files, prosecutors throughout California have been, in many cases, advising victims that their confessed abusers were returning home.

“I’ve had to do it twice in three weeks,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Larry Greene of San Luis Obispo County. “I’ve never had a worse experience.”

Once released, even admitted child molesters will have their criminal records wiped clean and their names erased from the sex offender registry.

Ambrocio Martinez Sabala, a former pastor at a Foursquare Church in the San Joaquin Valley town of Dinuba, was sentenced in February to seven years in state prison. He had pleaded no contest to molesting several of his daughters more than two decades ago.

The 73-year-old was released from a Kern County prison July 11, one day after a seven-minute hearing in which he and seven other molesters saw their convictions voided in a courtroom. Some of their victims attended the hearing.

“I am really disgusted that self-confessed abusers who plead guilty and no contest are being let go to prey on children again,” said Sonia Duke, 36, one Sabala’s daughters and a victim of his abuse. “Mark my words, they are going to do it again.”

The outcome also took a toll on prosecutors, who had worked for months building the cases.

“It wasn’t one of my better days in court,” said Tulare County Assistant Dist. Atty. Don Gallian.

Three Orange County men also walked out of prison last Thursday after their defense attorneys secured their release.

Admitted child molester Terrell Leon Gafford, 53, had served only six months of an eight-year sentence for abusing his teenage daughter in the 1980s.

Angel Amado Perez, 57, was convicted in 2000 of molesting two Santa Ana girls more than 20 years ago and sentenced to nine years in prison. And Mario Lopez Lua, 37, was serving a three-year sentence after pleading guilty last year to molesting a young girl in 1985.

Lua’s attorney, Allan Stokke, said his client pleaded guilty, giving up a well-paying job in the construction industry, even though the evidence against him “was very old” and “not all that clear.”

He said victims’ anger should be directed not at the Supreme Court but at lawmakers for passing a faulty law “that gave them false hope.”

Adrian M. Baca, who represented Payan on appeal and won his release, said other convicted child molesters still imprisoned are being unlawfully held.

He said he is surprised more inmates have not filed writs of habeas corpus with the court.

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Times staff writer H.G. Reza contributed to this report.