Dog Trainer Gets 16 Years in Prison for Molesting Daughter, Stepson

A dog trainer who pleaded guilty last month to molesting his 3-year-old daughter and 11-year-old stepson was sentenced in San Fernando Superior Court Friday to 16 years in prison.

Judge Robert D. Fratianne told Ausencio V. Torres, 30, that he wished he could have given him more than the maximum sentence allowed for the two counts of child molestation.

“This crime involved a high degree of cruelty and callousness,” Fratianne said as he pronounced sentence on Torres. “I wish I could sentence you to more for what you have done to these children.”

Torres, who molested the children while living with them and his common-law wife at the Acton ranch where he worked, was on probation for drunk driving when he committed the molestations during April and May of this year, a probation report said.

Court documents showed that Torres was arrested last year on suspicion of molesting his 5-year-old niece, but the girl’s family moved out of the area and refused to press charges.

In an interview with the probation officer, Torres admitted molesting his stepson at least nine times, but denied molesting his daughter, despite his guilty plea. He told the probation officer that he believed “he had the right to have sex with any human being that he felt like having sex with, including women and children.”

The childrens’ mother told the officer that Torres also claimed to have had sex with men and animals, the report said.

The mother asked Fratianne during Friday’s proceedings to keep Torres in jail “until my children are older and able to defend themselves.”

The probation officer concluded that Torres’ “sexual psyche functions on the primitive reptilian level. The defendant has sexually abused, terrorized and victimized his family in the fashion of a piranha in his own private pond.”

Torres originally faced five counts of child molestation, but the plea bargain was arranged to avoid forcing the young victims to testify, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Davis-Springer, who prosecuted the case.